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THE 



ROAD TO SPIRITUALISM 



BEING A SERIES OF FOUR LECTURES, 



DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OP 



THE NEW-YORK LYCEUM, 



BY 

DR. R. T. HALLOCK, 

AUTHOR OP "THE CHILD AND THE MAN." 



LECTURE I. — Spiritualism Considered as a Sctentific Problem. 
LECTURE II. — Spiritualism Considered as a Science. 
LECTURE III. — Spiritualism Considered with Respect to its Diffi- 
culties and Objections, both Intrinsic and Extrinsic. 
LECTURE IV.— The Science Impartially Applied. 




3Uw fork: 

PUBLISHED AT THE SPIRITUAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE, 

NO. 390 BROADWAY. 
1858. 






yt 



Cechtrs 1. 

SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED AS A SCIEN- 
TIFC PROBLEM. 



Ir being the object of this our Lyceum, to consider man in 
his various aspects and relations, from the stand-point of science 
and fact, in the place of mere traditionary assumption and his- 
tory ; and no clear insight as to his present being possible that 
does not also embrace his future, it is fitting we should commence 
with an examination of the grounds upon which that future is 
supposed to rest. 

I define Spiritualism, for the purpose of this essay, to be that 
doctrine which boldly asserts the continuity of human conscious- 
ness and individuality, unbroken by the event popularly, but 
most unscientifically, denominated death. Spiritualism, as thus 
defined, I purpose to consider as a scientific problem. The 
light, of course, in which I shall examine it as a problem, is re- 
flected from its facts and teachings ; for it is the day in which I 
live. A man can not step outside of his own experience to look 
at any thing ; at least with any certainty of seeing it with profit. 
The subject suggests its own importance. Obviously the fact 
as to whether human consciousness is limited to threescore and 
ten years, or whether that or any other number of years, has no 
relation whatever to its duration, makes all imaginable differ- 
ence with respect to the problems of the present. The absolute 
solution of all these rests upon the scientific solution of that. I 
say scientific solution, because we shall not escape the neces- 
sity of such solution,by taking the proposition for granted ; that 
is to say, by accepting immortality, though it be a truth, as a mat- 
ter of mere faith. For it to be of the least use to us, in this 
world of duty and of effort, we must know not only that it is, but 



4 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

how, and why we accept it. Without farther apology, then, I 
proceed to examine it, aside from its facts. 

By way of commencing at the beginning, I purpose to look 
at it as a problem not yet solved, or as one not capable, say, of 
demonstrative solution — in other words, to consider the a priori, 
the inductive, rationality of its claims. Waiving, then, for the 
present, all right to its stupendous accumulation of demonstra- 
tive evidence, I ask, what are the rational evidences of its truth? 
or, what has Science to say to Spiritualism ? 

Science is, by inherent nature, an infidel and a necessitarian. 
She accepts only what she cannot deny or reject. She has no 
reverence for authority — she is her own authority. She never 
asks, What saith the Lord God ? — her perpetual question is, 
What doeth the Lord God ? Her astronomy derives no strength 
from Joshua — her axioms were not invented by Solomon. She 
has no ears, only eyes ; no mercy, only truth. I wish to con- 
front this infidel with Spiritualism, with an eye to whatsoever 
family resemblance may exist between them. 

I start with the proposition, that, in the scientific scale, use, 
of all substances, whether classified as ponderable or impondera- 
ble, is the primary — that this is the newly discovered imponder- 
able to which all else is subsidiary, and that there is no getting 
beyond it, and no stopping short of it, for any apostle who fol- 
lows strictly where science points the way. I illustrate it by 
this example. An oak, as it stands revealed to the external 
senses, is & force and a form. In it, are the possibilities of a ship, 
a house, a shade, a medicine, &c, the totality of which is ex- 
pressed by the simple term, use. The oak, then, as to its exter- 
nals, is a form of use, and from it, as an ultimate, we are to trace 
the primary. Between its ultimation in form, and the acorn or 
germ, all is relatively free from mystery. But it may be useful 
for the investigator to pause awhile with the acorn in his hand, 
to consider the apparent discrepancy between the acorn and the 
full grown oak, which is its future history. There are within 
that acorn, five hundred years, crowded with perpetual change, 
and ever varying manifestation ; and stretching out beyond all 
this there is an infinite series of consequential uses 

" Folded up 



In the narrow cell of that tiny cup," 






AS A SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM. O 

which a six weeks' grasshopper would find inconveniently small 
for the purpose of his morning ablutions ! There is significance 
in this, which points to significance more occult — to a cause as 
remote from the acorn as a form, as the acorn itself is from its 
future history. We cut through the silex, the carbon, the pot- 
ash, the water, &c, together with a large family of impondera- 
bles, to find these, not a cause, but that which a cause behind 
them has fixed, and reduced to active service in its own behalf ; 
that is to say, to build the body of a use. Now, that substance 
which compels all others to minister to itself, must be regarded 
as primal. It must be held also to be what it does, and from 
its doing, we name it — Use. The tree we have been consider- 
ing, then, is simply the record which Use has written upon the 
voluminous pages of time and space. That which has enwrapped 
itself with the relatively inconsequential mass and glossy coat of 
an acorn, and which we must name Use, is the true oak, minus 
this history. 

In the last analysis, then, we reach use as the basic substance, 
and finding it back of the oak as a form, it must necessarily be 
that which is the producing substance and cause of all form. 
Retracing our steps thence, we find the pen with which use re- 
cords its voluminous transactions, to be force, and that the first 
bound edition of its infinite history, is form. Force is the graver's 
tool, wherewith Use, the sculptor, molds his living statuary. It 
stands thus. Use first, or primary, then force, which is the ma- 
chinery of use, and constitutes use doing, without which use 
were not — then form, which is its ultimate or continent. By this 
analysis, man as a personality must be defined as a form or body 
of use ; and next in the order of consideration, is the bearing 
this fact has upon Spiritualism. It is not pretended, any indi- 
vidual oak, or animal, is a perpetual form or body of use, and 
the inquirer naturally asks, how then is perpetuity predicable of 
man, from any ground yet stated ? The first distinction to be 
noticed is, that their uses are all subordinate to his use, and 
actually ultimate in him. Man is the continent of them all. 
They are not, themselves, the temple of perpetual use ; they are 
a part of the materials used in its construction. Man, as we 
shall see, is that temple. Science has found all their properties 
resident in man, and by this finding has demonstrated, that the 



6 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

all of man is not in them. For this reason she is forced to pro- 
nounce him a super-animal. And his superiority is farther seen 
in this ; that, whereas their uses are observed to terminate in 
man, the terminus of human uses has never yet been discovered. 
When an animal has perpetuated its kind, and has entered into 
the organism of the human as a constituent thereof, no farther 
use of it as an individuality is either traceable or conceivable. 
But this is the point where the use of the human, or super-ani- 
mal, may be said to begin. The need of such men as Jesus, 
and Socrates, and Cicero; such men as Luther, and Washington, 
and Franklin, is by no means limited by the years which they 
lived on the earth. We can conceive of no time in the future, 
when the race would not be benefited by the inspirations of their 
genius, intellect, and fidelity to truth, as of old it was blessed 
by then presence in the body. Hence it is, that the patriot, 
whatever his intellectual faith may be, in the hour of doubt and 
trouble, intuitively invokes the aid of Washington. The artist 
and the artizan, when the brain is giddy with the mighty thought 
they would incarnate, implore the inspirations of departed genius, 
as instinctively as they inhale the vital air ; and the Christian, 
though eighteen centuries have passed away, still turns to Jesus 
of Nazareth as the "present helper," when Nazareth itself, and 
even Jerusalem, with all its grandeur and glory, are forgotten ! 
These are among the universal and involuntary testimonials to 
the perpetual use of man. As a mere commodity to work up 
into cotton and molasses, what a complement is paid to man 
away down in Louisiana. There, the price of him ranges so 
high above that of mere oxen and asses, that in these days, they 
have it in serious contemplation to go over to Africa and steal 
him. Louisiana does not think of making up her deficiency of 
cattle in that way. It is to be observed also, that human uses 
are never duplicated. This is seen in all the prominent in- 
stances of it, which illustrate human history. When an animal 
is eaten up, or in any other way used up, we may go to the ex- 
change and buy another equally as good and useful. But man 
is not thus exhausted of value. The Jews have waited near two 
thousand years for another Jesus, and the Christians have been 
equally expectant for nearly the same length of time, of the re- 
appearance of the first. Their testimony is concurrent, that the 



[AS A SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM. 1 

race has produced but one. And if he is felt to be a need now, 
when eighteen centuries have passed, is it not a fair presumption 
that he will remain so for at least eighteen more ? The facts 
then, which would seem to be established, are these : First, that 
use creates form, which is its body. Secondly, that an individ- 
ualized form or body of use, is commensurate in duration, as an 
individuality, with the specific or individual use of which its 
form is the expression. Thirdly, that man, by authority of 
science, supported by the involuntary testimony of all classes and 
conditions of mankind, is a perpetual use. I leave science to 
state in her own terms, what is the natural conclusion from 
these facts. 

I proceed now to the consideration of another question, 
strictly within the domain of scientific inspection — the question 
as to what it is that, in the form of little boys and girls, we 
send to school to be intellectually educated. Clearly, it is not 
bone and muscle with their appurtenances, which we send there 
for that purpose ; we send these to the gymnasium and the play- 
ground. Whatever it may be as to substance, there is at least 
one ascertained power belonging to it, and that is memory, with- 
out which education were impossible. Now, there is one condi- 
tion scientifically inevitable to the manifestation of memory, 
which is, that the subject remembering, must be present in per- 
son with the event remembered ; that is to say, if a man at fifty, 
remembers a circumstance that occurred when he was but fifteen, 
then he must have been absolutely present at the time. All 
other knowledge of the past, is history or tradition. But what 
of the man of fifty, was present at fifteen ? Not a particle of 
his present bone, and- muscle, and nerve, was there at that time, 
for it is approximately truthful to say, that during the inter- 
vening thirty-five years, there have been at least four entire 
changes of all the atoms composing the forms of these, and all 
their appurtenant substances and organs. Hence the real man 
that was present then, is not the merely phenomenal man, visible 
to the external senses at the end of thirty-five years from the date 
of the remembered circumstance, but a man who can leap the 
barriers of all these changes, and carry with him the consecutive 
memories of all these thirty-five years, whilst bone, and muscle, 
and nervous tissue, have not consisted of the same atoms for any 



8 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

consecutive thirty-five seconds of the whole time 1 Again, I 
leave it for science to state, in whatever terms she conscientiously 
can, what kind of a man this must necessarily be. Place him by 
the side of the spirit-man of the " Rochester knockings," and we 
may leave her to her own thoughts on the question of resem- 
blance at least, if not of identity. 

But we send dogs to College, and we have learned pigs, and 
industrious fleas, together with goats and canary birds who enact 
tragedy and comedy ; and all these remember, and are educata- 
ble as well as man. True, to a certain extent. But the first 
thing to notice in your canine college is, that in all its depart- 
ments, a man, and not a dog, invariably occupies the professor's 
chair ; and that when a monkey enacts Othello, it requires a 
man, instead of a goat, for stage manager and prompter. The 
four-footed graduate with the mystic letters A. B. tagged to his 
tail, is a thorough niggard of his new-blown honors — he never 
confers them upon his fellows. The English mastiff, though 
wonderfully teachable, never sets up a school for young puppies. 
This suggests the question involved in the phenomenon of edu- 
cation, as it is exemplified by both men and animals, as to what 
it is they really acquire by the process. In other words, what 
is it that, through education, expands the child-mentality into 
that of manhood — and what is it which, through the same means, 
performs the same office for the dog ? Here is growth in both 
cases ; and growth is only predicable of substance, with power 
to accrete other substance homogeneous with itself. The rigid, 
scientific meaning of education is, that the subject, be he boy, 
or be he puppy, has been eating, digesting and assimilating 
something that has made him bigger and stronger in his mentality. 
What have they respectively eaten and carried through the pro- 
cesses of digestion and assimilation ? If the similarity which is 
apparent in the methods which for popular purposes we name 
education, and apply with equal propriety to both, is to be found 
also in the substances mutually assimilated, then of necessity, a 
corresponding similarity of general consequences must ensue, as 
well as in the specific consequence, which is growth. Among 
these consequences, would be similarity of duration ; that is to 
say, all other things being equal, two structures being composed 
of the same materials, must be equal in their power to resist de- 



AS A SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM. 9 

composition. And here it is proper to remark, that so arbitrary 
and universal is the law of relation between use and durability, 
that even animal memory is concluded by it. The facts of ma- 
ternity live not in the memory of the animal, beyond the point 
required by determinate use. But to return. Now, if science 
can determine what it is that, by education, is deposited in the 
mental organism, she can trace the destiny of both men and ani- 
mals with respect to duration, with her own finger. 

Let us note the facts she has to offer upon this point. She 
has already noted a dissimilarity of teachers. She finds that 
men can teach men what dogs know, but that dogs can not teach 
each other what men know. She observes also, that an animal 
can be taught only that which is phenomenal or superficial. He 
can not be indoctrinated as to truths or uses lying beneath the 
surface. A parrot can be taught to repeat the alphabet, but he 
never uses it to record his private opinions. This determines to 
a nicety, how far he has progressed in his intellectual education- 
No learned pig has yet produced a poem. The cognition of 
such forms, (not their uses,) as relate directly to the individual 
needs of the animal, is a finality with him. Not so with the 
human ; his education begins where that of the pig and parrot 
ends. She further observes the fact, that sameness of material, 
and not form or shape, determines for both the same final de- 
composition of their respective bodies. Having seen that simi- 
larity of material results in similarity of duration, and having 
observed the fact that animal mentality takes cognizance only 
of forms, and not at all of the uses or truths, of which they, (the 
forms) are the ever changing expression, it follows, of necessity, 
that the animal, as a totality, consists wholly of the substance 
necessary to the expression of form, and of consequence, there 
can be nothing within him that can escape the universal destiny 
of form, which is perpetual change. This fact alone, disposes of 
the animal. That which can not digest and assimilate the meat 
and drink of use and truth, can not be an ultimate form of those 
eternal verities. Life, which is use creating, pronounces by au- 
thority of its known laws, that no individualized manifestation 
of it can be perpetual, into the composition of which nothing 
that is substantial or permanent can enter. A house builded of 
wood is limited in the possibility of duration, by the length of 
1* 



10 



SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 



time that wood can resist the law of disintegration. Our ware- 
houses and our soul-houses, our merchandise and ourselves, are 
subject in this respect to the one law — if they are identical in 
material, they must be alike in duration. 

But they are not. No merchandise can enter into the com- 
position of human mentality. You can not purchase a cargo of 
lumber, and out of it construct a human soul. It is not builded 
of form, but of the use and truth which create form : and the 
process is as open to observation as its corresponding physical 
phenomenon — the building up of the bodily structure. As thus : 
Out of any material you choose, (say of gingerbread, ) construct 
the form of a triangle. Now the boy is not educated or developed 
mentally, by transferring that form to his physical stomach — that 
which developes the intellect never takes that direction. He is 
mentally strengthened and developed by assimilating with his 
own consciousness, not the figure, but the use or truth of it. 
Having partaken to his heart's content of that, he may eat up 
the diagram which expressed it, with profit to his body, and no 
loss whatever to his soul. In this they do but take their appro- 
priate courses — the transitory to the body, the eternal to the 
soul. That body of use which is man, is the embryotic form of 
all the knowledges and uses of the universe. His form, then, is 
Divine, necessarily the ultimate or complex of all form, and ab- 
solutely indestructible, by virtue of the durability of the substance 
which composes it. Scientifically deduced therefore, man stands 
forth a Divine form of eternal use — eternity itself being but ano- 
ther name for the activity of use — perpetual using. And hav- 
ing God and eternity within himself, man, in the light of this 
inevitable deduction, is in perfect accord with what the facts of 
a far more comprehensive science than any yet recognized by the 
schools, demonstrate him to be. 

Again : science reveals this fact, that of the round thousand, 
(be the same more or less,) of what she names laws of nature, 
nine hundred and ninety-nine of them are known to be actively 
engaged with one accord, in the production of man. They build 
solar systems, perfect and beautify worlds, not to produce dogs 
as a finality, but men. Now, it is for her to consider the scien- 
tific probability, of nine hundred and ninety-nine laws, working 
harmoniously through innumerable ages to perfect a single re- 



AS A SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM. 11 

suit, and the thousandth and last of the series, annihilating it 
the moment it is reached ! There are no such words as miracle 
and chance in her vocabulary ; man stands there as the ultimate 
of all law — the final form to which all other forms have minis- 
tered. Every line she can trace from the great heart of nature, 
outwardly, through suns and systems, forces and forms, manifes- 
tation and law, culminates in him. Therefore, as the totality of 
law and force is perpetually busy with the production of man, 
science will be obliged to step outside of the infinity of law, to 
find one sufficiently at leisure to destroy him — all the forces 
within the reach of her telescope being quite otherwise engaged. 
Mention must be made of one more fact that science has dis- 
closed, its inferences being too pointed to escape notice in the 
consideration of this problem. Man is known, under certain 
conditions, to manifest all the functions usually attributed to the 
organs of the external senses, with perfect independence of their 
normal activity. As, for example, he has perfect vision when 
the external eye is closed. The facts of science, then, disclose 
to us a man, performing the wonderful functions of a man, inde- 
pendently of what seems to be the man himself. The conclu- 
sion is natural, therefore, that what seems to be the man is not 
so in reality, but that the real man stands back of, and on a 
plane superior to, his sensuous form. If science can build a loop- 
hole of escape from this conclusion, I am ready to accept it with 
gratitude. A man in the night time, with eyes turned partially 
upside down, lids closed and bandaged, with a pair of silk gloves 
thrust underneath to absorb what little light there might pos- 
sibly be sifted through it, seeing clearer, and vastly farther, than 
with his external optics in their best estate, assisted by the light 
of day — what does this and its kindred facts signify ? Is there 
any escape from the conclusion, that they are spiritual pheno- 
mena, indicating that man himself is in fact a spirit, and that 
spirit itself is not the undefined fog of popular conception, but 
the substantial, the internal and governing power, which subor- 
dinates all else to itself ? I repeat, what escape is there from 
this conclusion, save through the door of facts able to demon- 
strate this to be a false fact ? That alone can overturn its inevi- 
table deductions. But instead, after experiments innumerable, 
made by skepticism the most unyielding, that eye still looks with 



12 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

its deep blue calmness, through the mists and clouds which invest 
the base of the mount of science, as if from the hight it had at 
tained, it reveled, in very deed, amid the glories of eternal sun- 
shine. And well it may, for the facts of that higher science, to 
which allusion has been made, have revealed it, flashing from be- 
neath the brow of an angel. No fact within the store-house of 
science, has yet revealed in the animal the existence of this inner 
and spiritual eye. Tliat eye and its cognate organs which per- 
ceive truth as well as fact, use as well as form, by authority of 
observed facts, belongs exclusively to the human. 

And now, upon this brief and very imperfect statement of the 
case, with a " cloud of witnesses" still to examine, I pause to 
ask, what is the verdict ? How looks rigid, scientific induction 
which gives no mercy and begs no favors, side by side with the 
facts of that Spiritualism, which, for the last ten years, the most of 
her exponents have denounced and persecuted with open contempt 
and ridicule ? Spiritualism is no new problem which ought to 
have taken the disciples of science by surprise ; it has rapped at 
the door of every thinker throughout the ages for a solution. 
Wanting it, the popular thought, misdirected by a theology that 
was stone blind, and which still remains so, has invested the im- 
mortality of its own faith with grave clothes, and converted it 
into a scare-crow ! — transforming the most beautiful and sublime 
process whereby humanity is glorified, into a ghastly skeleton, 
which its ignorance has named death, and, converted it into an 
object of the profoundest horror. It was for science to strip these 
rags from the immortal spirit: Why has it not been done ? 

One of her noblest ornaments said of a certain star, ere yet its 
image had honored the speculum of any telescope — It must be 
there ; turn your glass in a certain direction, and you will find it. 
It was found. Why had science no Leverrier competent, by 
authority of induction from established fact, to say of the human 
Spirit, It must be. It is the bright particular star, wanting 
which, your vaunted system of science revolves about no center, 
can have no fixed orbit, is without order, and void of all conclu- 
sion. Hence it must be there, and the telescope of observation 
shall yet reveal it. Had she possessed such a man, the ghastly 
immortality of the popular faith, fanned into horror by a theology 
void of facts, would long since have passed away. Had not the 



AS A SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM. 13 

apostles of science betrayed her for a " consideration ;" had they 
been true to themselves and to her, such a one would have made 
his advent long ago, with that truth stamped upon his inductive 
brow ; and his fellow-apostles, from all her observatories, would 
have been ranging their telescopes in ardent expectation of its near 
approach ; and when interrogated — " Watchman, what of the 
night/' would have answered, " Lo ! the dawn appeareth I" 

In the absence of this fidelity, the breach between the so- 
called science and religion (there never was any breach between 
the true), necessarily grew wider and deeper. Men turned with 
instinctive disgust from the simples she was said to present as the 
all of man in the final analysis. So the young and vigorous 
science, which was able to dispute with the doctors of the temple, 
in their own sanctum, when but twelve years old, came at last to 
the "crown of thorns/ 7 the "wormwood and the gall" of priestly 
domination and ecclesiastical contempt. Her disciples were quite 
ready (and are so still) to array themselves on her right hand 
and on her left, in her kingdom of popular esteem, provided she 
ever gets possession of it, but found it inconvenient to 
drink of her cup, or to go down with her in baptism to the 
waters of public ridicule ; so in her hour of trial, when she was 
about fully to establish her divine mission, one betrayed her, 
another began to curse and to swear, saying he knew her not, and 
all forsook her and fled. No man of them all showed a friendly 
face, and when she arose from the dead, for she has arisen, she 
was seen first and greeted first, of woman. She has since been 
seen by at least five hundred. Her betrayers did not destroy 
her, they only committed suicide — their diploma-invested skele- 
tons appear in our streets, playing then* fantastic tricks "in 
the face of Israel and the sun," trampling upon their acknowl- 
edged principles, and, in the sacred name of science, setting their 
profane hoofs upon her very heart, and trampling out all her es- 
tablished methods of procedure. Some of these refuse to read 
Buckland, for fear it will unsettle their faith in Moses ! As if 
truth could be divided against itself, and it were a duty imposed 
by religion upon science, to hurrah with the bigger half — as if 
discord could exist between physics and metaphysics. Others 
convert the laws of the solar system into a propitiatory sacrifice 
to tike great Joshua, and offer them upon an altar of the ram's horns 



14 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED. 

wherewith he blew down the walls of Jericho. And they do it 
too, on the scientific principle established by the Dutch justice, 
who decided that a man might bite off his own nose, provided it 
was the will of Grod. Others of them deem no object or subject 
worthy their special regard, that is of newer date than the old 
red sand-stone. In lyceum and hall, in club and convention, you 
shall see them, sitting like galvanized mummies; one, rasping his 
intellectual bumps with the serrated edges of an overgrown tooth, 
supposed to belong to some antediluvian shark ; another, picking 
his scientific grinders with the tail of a trilobite ; and, in these 
days, when the subject of Spiritualism is mentioned in their pres- 
ence, each, from his favorite perch, hoots in concert, like an 
august conclave of owls disagreeably affected by the close prox- 
mity of day-light. 



Uzixxxz 2. 
SPIRITUALISM CONSIDEKED AS A SCIENCE. 



Passing from the inductive basis sought to be established for 
Spiritualism, I come to the consideration of Spiritualism itself 
as a science. Defining science to be a system of self-evident 
truth, facts of observation and experiment, and the philosophy 
which cements them together, the inquiry is, has Sjnritualism 
a just claim to be considered a science ? 

I assert the affirmative, and am ready with the proof. The 
self-evident, or pure science — the mathematics, so to speak, of 
Spiritualism is, that man is a spirit. That this is self-evident, is 
because, as was shown in the preceding essay, Spirit is found at 
the base of all form, and within all the laws or unvarying 
methods manifested in form, or what is called matter. To affirm, 
therefore, that man is a Spirit, is simply to state a self-evident 
truth ; which, like the multiplication table of numerical science, 
has only to be really seen by all men, to be accepted by all. Now, 
whoever accepts this self-evident truth, makes, by the act, a logi- 
cal surrender of all objection to the possible manifestation of 
Spirit, and fairly concedes the ground claimed by the Spiritual- 
ist, which is, that man, as a Spirit, does manifest himself. But 
the multiplication table, self-evident truth though it be, has not 
only to be learned as a task by children, it must be understood 
as a fact, depending upon unalterable principles, before they can 
avail themselves, to the full, of its advantages. So of this truth 
that man is a Spirit ; whoever admits it, and straightway denies 
Spiritualism, furnishes the certain indication that the basic truth, 
as is so often the case with the child's task, has been heard of 
merely, but never understood. To accept the one, and deny the 
other, is to publish one's profound ignorance of both. Believing 



16 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

man to be a Spirit, helps us to the solution of no problem ; 
knowing him to be so, gisves us the needed element of pure 
science wherewith to resolve all questions concerning him. 

Resting upon this self-evident truth as a basis, is the stupen- 
dous pyramid of facts, verified by observation and inference. The 
evidence is two-fold. It is both absolute and inferential ; that 
is to say, it is absolute, and that which is inevitably deduced 
from the absolute. We enter upon a field here, of no common 
importance. If what we shall find within it will bear the test, 
that is to say, if our facts do not turn out to be illusions, or, if 
not wholly illusory, if they point really in the direction they in" 
dicate to the senses, then is Spiritualism the science of sciences — 
the deep sea line with which to fathom all mystery — then has 
this age made a contribution to the wealth of human knowledge, 
truly worthy of itself— of its grand achievements in the realm 
of physics. 

In the spring of eighteen hundred and forty-eight, a fact 
transpired, which, if history is to be credited as a faithful record 
of important events, never occurred before in the experience of 
man. David Fox, a member of the family of that name so 
prominent in the history of modern Spiritualism, entered a cer- 
tain cellar in the town of Hydesville, county of Wayne, and 
State of New York, and did then and there interrogate certain 
sounds, as of a person knocking upon a hard substance ; which 
sounds, it was known, were not produced by any visible human 
being, nor yet by any machinery operated by an ordinary mor- 
tal secreted about the house. These sounds and other strange 
manifestations had for days and weeks before astonished the entire 
family, eluding their most diligent search to discover the cause. 
Indications, on one occasion previous to this, having been observed 
by his mother and sisters, of an intelligent direction to these 
sounds, David Fox addressed their hypothetical author in these 
words : " If you are a man, and once inhabited this world as I 
now do, can not you rap to the letters that will spell your name, 
if I repeat th,e alphabet ? If you can, please to rap three times!" 
The suggested affirmative responses were promptly made, and on 
the fulfillment of his share of the contract, he found, as the joint 
product, an intelligible English sentence — Charles B. Rosma. 
This is the fact, — what does it signify ? Certainly a human being 



AS A SCIENCE. It 

stood related to it as a cause ; that at least is a self-evident 
truth, if there be no other. Unpretending as this event appears 
in mere statement, it was an entirely new thing in the experience 
of man ; and I go back to it for the sake of an inference grow- 
ing out of the simple fact that it was new. What becomes of 
all the new discoveries of fact ? Do they lead to nothing, and 
die out ? or do they not rather introduce a new era, and work a 
complete revolution in the direction of their peculiar nature ? I 
am yet to learn of a single instance of new discovery that is 
without this sequence, unless this be one, and if so, it stands 
alone. What we call a fact is the form of a use ; is it rational 
that the discovery of a use should lead to no use ? Franklin 
got a spark and a slight sensation in his knuckles from a com- 
mon door-key appended to the string of a kite, passing beneath 
a cloud during a shower of rain. Consider the unending and 
perpetually growing results to the race in all its future, arising 
out of the new fact, then for the first time duly observed, and let 
it stand as the true indicator of the profound significance of all 
new discovery in the realm of truth and fact. Whence comes 
the magic of the simple words we pronounce, Copernicus, New- 
ton, Franklin, Fulton, etc., etc., but from the mighty results 
growing out of the new things they brought to light ? Their 
names were thoroughly common place till then. 

It is common in these days to hear this question from the lips 
of some complacent mortal, who, perchance, removes a cigar 
from his mouth, that he may give a sharper point to the physi- 
ognomic expression by which he would have the world under- 
stand that he has settled the matter long ago — " Well, grant 
all that you may say of Spiritualism ; what use is it ?" Doctors 
of Divinity have been known to ask it, and with an air which 
indicated the consciousness of having said a great thing for the 
" defense of the Gospel." Truly, they have said a very signifi- 
cant thing, but whether exactly the thing they suppose, is quite 
another question. He, a master of the science of God, " of 
whom, and to whom, are all things," conceding that a thing is, 
and then, by the very proclamation of the question, affirming 
that it is of no use ! He, a D.D. or Doctor of God, and yet to 
learn that a thing is, solely by virtue of its being a use ! In the 
practical estimation of a Doctor of Divinity, who can ask that 



18 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

question withthe smirk of infidelity upon his face, God never made 
anything but an old book, and required help at that. With him, 
God is a myth — " a good-enough Morgan till after election" — 
an ideal D. D., who never treats patients himself and in his own 
way, but has made him the chief family physician, with all the 
medicine a human soul can need, piously stowed away in his own 
evangelical saddle-bags. 

The point I make is, that the importance invariably observed 
as a result of new discovery, indicates, as the natural law of the 
series, a corresponding importance to the one under consideration. 
Has it not followed ? and, does not what has followed, indi- 
cate in turn the genuineness and true character of the thing 
discovered ? David Fox, holding converse with that immortal, 
stood — where every original discoverer has first stood — "alone 
with his fact and God !" But only at first. Soon, the fact 
grew like every other true thing. The " grain of mustard seed" 
found soil and took root, and spread far beyond the family that 
first received it into their bosom, and have watered it by a life's 
devotion; and it has borne fruit abundantly. It is good to lin- 
ger around that new thing, until we have drank largely of its 
significance, and interwoven its interpretation with the frame- 
work of our thought. It is not for the Christian to advance the 
doctrine, that the good God gives us facts, to be lightly es- 
teemed or misunderstood, with safety to ourselves. 

It is to be considered and duly weighed, that the facts wit- 
nessed by that family, have never been successfully imitated by 
any human contrivance, nor explained by any mundane hypothe- 
sis that has lived beyond the hour of its birth. They have alike 
disgraced the solemn pronouncements of doctors and divines, and 
refuted the theories of "toe-joint snappers" by raps, which have 
not only shaken then* admiring disciples out of their faith in the 
new-born explanation ; but the very house itself in which they 
occurred. Now, it is but reasonable surely, that that, which for 
ten consecutive years, has triumphantly refuted all explanation 
save what is offered by itself, should finally be listened to with 
respectful attention. And it would also seem rational, that if, 
during this, the eleventh year, nothing transpires to refute the said 
explanation, more formidable than existing hypotheses, that ex- 
planation should be held as conclusive. Debts have been pro- 



AS A SCIENCE. 19 

nounced by able jurists, outlawed at the end of seven years. I am 
unable to state the precise terms of the statute of limitations which 
obsoletes a theory that never did anything but demonstrate the 
ignorance of its founder ; but it is certainly liberal to suppose, 
that a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, would demand 
that a ten years' failure should finally table it. It is not merely 
ludicrous — it provokes thought as well as mirth, this solemn pro- 
cession of defunct theories, culled from the very sanctums of 
science and religion, wending their way to the world's " recepta- 
cle for dry rubbish," and keeping time, on its march thither, to 
what might be called in musical phrase : " The Rochester 
Knocking Quick-step." Is there not profound significance in 
the fact that the thing will not be killed ? Whole asylums of 
the insane have been hurled at its head. All the usual means, 
heretofore so effective in sending the devil to the right-about, 
have been applied in vain. Newspaper bullets have been fired 
at it from every rampart that could conceal a foe, and the heavy 
ordnance of science and sectarianism, loaded with twenty-four 
pound theories, crammed to the muzzle with the grape and can- 
ister of ridicule, slander and denunciation, have been brought to 
bear against it in the open field ; and all to no purpose, save to 
injure the leaders of this furious onslaught, by the recoil of their 
own artillery. 

Surely this defeat is not without suggestion. It indicates a 
Rubicon which materialism cannot pass, but which all exploring 
science must, in order to find the true cause of its invincibility, 
its perpetual life and growth. Is it not justifiable in the thinker, 
after a faithful, but wholly unsuccessful application of all other 
science to a given phenomenon, to accept that as the true science, 
which both causes and explains it ? The thing done, and the 
known facts and laws of its doing, if these make not a valid 
claim to the title of science, what can ? 

But this inexplicable knocking is not the only fact of the new 
science, nor are the good people of Rochester the only persons 
who have observed them. They have been witnessed throughout 
the world. I have myself seen the answer to a question, raised 
in open daylight, in less than one minute, out of the flesh and 
blood of a woman's arm ! The answer was in fair, round letters, 
accompanied by a well-drawn diagram to illustrate its doctrine. 



20 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

I have in my possession, an answer to a question, written with a 
pencil taken out of my own hand by a seventh hand, when there 
were but three persons visible to the senses, in the room and I 
knew the exact position of their six hands. In compliance with 
a request, I have seen a common-sized table moved with great 
rapidity and force, in all directions about a room, when the only 
persons visible, instead of causing its motion by touching it, had 
more than they could do to keep out of its way. I have made 
one of three persons, the other two heavier than myself, who 
stood upon a table, at the same time, and were lifted clear of the 
floor ; the other six or eight persons present merely sitting by 
and looking on. I have had mental questions answered by being 
patted upon the head by a pair of hard, muscular hands, when 
the only other pair near me belonged to a young lady, and they, 
during the whole time, were firmly held in my own. I have been 
gently and caressingly pressed upon the back of my own hand, 
by a pair of little hands, as of a child, when there was no child 
belonging to this world in the room, or in the house. I have seen 
a man lifted, several times in succession, clear of the floor, with 
no other visible human being within fifteen feet of him whilst it 
was being done ; the twelve or fourteen persons who saw it with 
me, having no farther conscious agency in the matter than sim- 
ply observing it. I have heard music, which was delightful to 
listen to (I am no judge of its scientific value), from a piauo 
with its key-board turned to the wall, and its own legs at inter- 
vals beating time to the music. I have heard " Home, Sweet 
Home" from an accordeon, with sweeter effect than from any 
other source, while the instrument was being held upside down 
under a table, and by one hand only, every other hand being 
upon the table. 

These, and a large number of cognate facts, have occurred 
under my own personal observation, not once or twice only, but 
many times, and in the presence of living witnesses who have testi- 
fied with me, and who will testify again, to their truth and reality. 
And these, be it remembered, form some of the items of a single 
observer only. They have occurred in nearly all, if not all, the 
cities of the civilized world, from San Francisco to St. Peters- 
burg. For the last ten years, every newspaper asserting its own 
freedom on any other days of the year than the twenty-first of 



AS A SCIENCE. 21 

December, the fourth of July, and "just before election," has 
published a vast number of similar facts, observed under every 
variety of circumstance, and by all classes of individuals. The 
present sample is given by way of illustration simply, of what is 
meant by the positive evidence upon which Spiritualism rests as a 
science. Can there be a mind able, with the least respect to its 
meaning, to pronounce the word science, needing an argumenta- 
tive exposition of their true import ? They point their own sig" 
nificance more directly than any argument possibly can. Man is 
seen in them all. Not the psychologically induced man ; not 
the unconsciously projected man of the involuntary organism, 
stultifying his own consciousness and voluntary powers, together 
with all the observed facts of science, by doing without purpose 
what he cannot do with, though aided by all the machinery that 
science and art have produced ; but man from beyond the 
grave, with will, affection, intelligence, judgment — every- 
thing which constitutes a man, not omitting the visibi- 
lity of portions of his Spirit-projected body, and in some in- 
stances, the whole of it. We can have no other evidences 
than such as these, of the presence of man, under any circum- 
stances : I therefore deem them absolute and conclusive. If they 
do not make out the return of man, alive and well, from beyond 
the grave, how is it to be established that a man ever returned 
to New York from Liverpool, or any other place on earth ? 

But again : this temple of science, like every other solid struc- 
ture, is not a " dry wall f its blocks of granite are cemented by 
the facts of inference and the crystals of induction. Allusion 
was made in the previous Lecture to additional evidence of this 
kind, some of which may now be introduced. Gall discovered 
a new science of mind, and Mesmer, a new series of mental 
powers. Both these discoveries indicate a science which is able 
to combine and classify them with its own facts — a more compre- 
hensive science, which is Spiritualism. Mesmer's facts are spir- 
itual. He was the Columbus of a new and virgin spiritual con- 
tinent, rich in beauty, and prolific of unimaginable use. Like 
his prototype, he laid his new-born fact at the feet of science, and 
like him, was rudely thrust from her sanctuary by the priests 
who ministered at her altar. Mesmer, before that august 
academy, whose fiat was held to be fife or death to whatever 



22 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

thing it condescended to pass upon, is a phenomenon worth 
considering. The light it sheds is a beacon, which may help 
those who have eyes, to steer a course. Science has no respect 
to-day for the decision which sent Mesmer and his fact in dis- 
grace from her accredited tribunal. Little did the suppliant who 
asked an impartial investigation and an honest verdict, or the 
savans who denied him both, dream of the results which were to 
flow from that newly opened fountain of truth. 

Philosophers and scientific gentlemen who never knew that 
they believed in Mesmerism, until they heard of the " Rochester 
Knockings," (which after all, must be held as in some degree prac- 
tical, since they have knocked the recognition of that fact through 
their sculls at last, when it seems nothing else could,) say that 
Spiritualism is Mesmerism. And so, no doubt, it is, properly 
stated ; but, with the accuracy natural to that genius and wis- 
dom which does not know that it accepts a thing for true, until 
it becomes a self-imposed duty to prove some other truth to be 
false, they have placed the cart before the horse. Had they said j 
Mesmerism is a manifestation of Spiritualism, they would have 
stated the precise truth, whether they understood it or not. But 
they are not classed at all with its absolute proofs, though there 
are sciences, holding high rank in the world, resting on bases not 
more solid than would Spiritualism, had it no other facts than 
those derived from the discovery of Mesmer. 

Gall's discovery recalled the human mind from its airy seat 
amid the visionary speculations of theology and existing 
science ; and whereas it was without known form, and void of 
all ascertained locality or habitation, he demonstrated it to be or- 
ganic ; and boldly proclaimed that it was to be known and 
studied only as related to substance and form. What a stride was 
there in the direction of truth, from the inconclusive metaphysics 
of the schools. Aristotle, Des Cartes, and Locke, have been in 
turn worshiped and persecuted, honored and disgraced, but finally 
forgotten in the demonstrative science of organic mind. We 
have only to consult the works of Locke, Rted, Stewart, and 
others, once the very autocrats of metaphysics, to intensify our 
emotions of gratitude for eternal riddance from a mountain of 
inconclusiveness, lifted from our shoulders by the discovery of 
Gall. In giving to mind a necessary relation with substance and 



AS A SCIENCE. 23 

form, making substance and form an index, to a certain extent, 
of the character of mind, was indicated the true form of a human 
soul— what Spiritualism has demonstrated — that a human Spirit 
is a living man, and is never separate from form and sub- 
stance. The force of the true inference drawn from the facts of 
phrenology, is not weakened in the least, by the proximate con- 
clusion, which seemed to lead to Materialism, instead of Spir- 
itualism. It is true, doubtless, that Gall and the galvanic battery 
have been the natural and innocent causes of more anti-Spirit- 
ualism, than Yoltaire and all the apostles of his school. But 
this only shows how necessary it is for the student to ponder the 
alphabet or elementary principles of his science ; and not to imi- 
tate the urchins of the primary school, who are prone -to forsake 
it for the pictures and fables, which childhood loves so well. The 
blunder was in confounding the machinery with its motive power. 
Mesmer's discovery reached behind, or rather within, that of 
Gall, and demonstrates a power, and the existence of faculties 
able to manifest themselves when the machinery which Gall has 
verified is not in working order. Gall discovered a great fact ; 
Mesmer found a greater one within it. 

And here again is seen the true tendency of a new discovery, 
no matter of what, provided it be genuine. Am I asked, what 
is an absolute test of truth ? I answer, that is the true thought, 
the true science, or the true thing, that grows ever broader, more 
substantial and consequential, the farther it can be traced from 
its first appearance. Truth, in whatever form, perpetually 
stretches out its arms toward infinity. It is ambitious to fill the 
universe with itself. The diminutive ovum of the merest shad, 
would fill the immensity of ocean with its fishy life — Why ? Be- 
cause that insignificant form is the body of a divine reality, and 
God's truth must grow! This positive index of truth, shows us also 
the error and the mistake. These alone can wither and die, 
which shows that in themselves there is no life. Nothing but 
truth can successfully resist decay. 

Passing along the stream of magnetic truth, whose fountain 
Mesmer had opened, we come to a phenomenon deserving special 
attention. It first met the public eye in the month of August, 
eighteen hundred and forty-seven, in the form of a large book, 
bearing upon its cover these mysterious words — " Revelations, 



24 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

etc., by A. J. Davis, the Clairvoyant." The merits of that work 
are not now the special theme of consideration, but its produc- 
tion. It 4 is matter of fact, that the author was not twenty- 
one years of age when his work was put to press, that he had 
not even what is termed in the most liberal sense, a common 
school education ; and that, as a necessary consequence, much 
of the language and most of the topics treated upon, must have 
been new and unfamiliar to him at the time. 

Now, on the authority of common experience, the elements 
necessary to the production of a work of similar size, consecu- 
tiveness of statement, scientific research, critical analysis, and 
variety of topic — no matter whether the doctrine be true or 
false — I say to produce such a work as that, the elements re- 
quired are, vigorous manhood, with an intellect enriched by fa- 
miliarity with the subjects of which it treats, and a knowledge of 
science which is the usual result of years of study. And yet we 
see there are wanting in the production of this work, every one 
of them. There was neither the age nor the ripened scholarship, 
which the laws of literature demand, to be found as a product of 
time and mental culture in the author of that work. How, then, 
is it to be accounted for ? Why has it not been sifted, and its 
cause explained, by a commission of scientific men ? It is a 
mental prodigy unknown to the history of book-making. To 
have scientifically explained the mystery of its existence, would 
have set all similar mysteries in open day-light. The sacred 
books of all peoples and ages, the inspirations of prophecy and of 
genius — all that the world has deemed miracle, is included in the 
true explanation of the origin of that book ; and with it, re- 
duced to law, and the comprehension of science. Surely, here 
is matter worthy of investigation, and yet, notwithstanding the 
parade of scientific conventions and scientific discovery, this 
phenomenon is not a musty tradition of what superstition supposes 
may have occurred anterior to Noah's flood, but a present fact, 
and up to this hour, neither scientific committee nor individual apos- 
tle has attempted an explanation. As if science had only to do with 
the outside of things, or else had the power to deny the existence 
of all that it has not explained. Herein, has mere scholastic or 
routine science, demonstrated its superficiality ; that a fact of 
this magnitude could occur in its very presence, and under its 



AS A SCIENCE. 25 

most profound nose, and not a man among its accredited apostles 
to grapple with it ! No explanation is to be looked for from 
that quarter. There is no " saving grace" for the universal in- 
quietude of the mind's mysteries, in these apostles. We know 
where they are — it is night with them — they have gone to roost 
under the church ; at least all that the church can accommodate, 
and the remainder are snoozing where they can, with a volume 
of Voltaire under their heads. When I likened them to a con- 
clave of owls, I did injustice to that genus ; all its species that I 
ever fell in with, can turn their eyes straight ahead, as well as 
straight behind ; whereas, a thoroughly orthodox disciple of 
scholastic science, as of scholastic religion, can only look the 
wrong way. If explained at all, it is to be done by other men 
than these, and through the finding of other elements than be- 
long to the mere externalities of matter, and whoever does it, 
will have found Spiritualism. That assertion recorded on the 
six hundred and seventy-fifth page of the book, that the truth of 
communion between men in the body and spirits out of it, would, 
" ere long, present itself in the form of a living demonstration/ 
and which was verified in less than three years, by the experience 
of thousands, is more than presumptive that the real origin of 
the book is spiritual; or in other words, that it is what it pro- 
fesses to be, " A Revelation" etc. We accept it as an undoubted 
fact, that the planet Jupiter is an inhabited world, on inferences 
no more solid and conclusive. Indeed, what can be more so ? 

But there is another thing under the sun, demanding inquiry. 
During these days, the public ear, to a very large extent, has 
been lent to children. 

Childhood and childish inexperience have mounted its rostrums 
and harangued without stint or prohibition. Grant that this is 
often without any great display of genius or of wisdom ; the true 
question is : Why are they there at all ? and how do they main- 
tain themselves in a position which would tax ripened experience 
to the utmost? The profundity of statement is not now the point ; 
all that need be said of it is, the public interest indicates, either 
unusual talent in the speaker, or unusual folly in itself. But it is a 
new thing for young girls and boys, or for childish experience 
even in those who are older, to speak as they are known to do. 
The mere superficialist, in hot pursuit of the supernal wisdom, 
2 



26 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

and the sharp critic who listens that he may establish the impor- 
tant principle that there can be no truth in one direction where 
there is great folly in another, alike contrive to overlook the real 
thing conducive to their own increase of spiritual strength and 
intellectual growth, which is, as above intimated, a study of the 
laws of the phenomenon itself. The wisdom displayed is simply 
its incidental. What has broken down the natural barriers of 
modesty and inexperience, hitherto all-sufficient to restrain child- 
hood from the usurpation of positions sacred to gray-haired ex" 
perience and ripened wisdom ? Granting their ability to overleap 
the barriers of modesty and natural diffidence, and that their usur- 
pation of the office of public teachers is a piece of barefaced 
impudence ; that would not give them the acknowledged 
ability they display ; indeed, the talent is wholly incompatible 
with the supposed impudence. The true measure of this ability, 
it should be said in passing, is not found by comparing it with 
what Franklin, Bacon, Plato, or any other ripe thinker might be 
judged competent to say, but in a comparison with the well-ascer- 
tained natural or ordinary status of the speaker. The primary 
object for scientific consideration is, the marked difference so 
often observed in the same individual. In these cases, where 
education or knowledge acquired by experience are known to be 
absent, the ability which marks one phase of the individual, must 
arise from one of two causes, and both are spiritual ; that is 
to say, the speaker is either manifesting inherent spiritual powers, 
or else there is a spiritual rapport with other minds from whom 
the superiority manifested is derived ; but in either case, it is a 
spiritual fact, produced solely by Spirit, entirely independent of 
the physical organs as a means of acquiring knowledge of exter- 
nal principles or things. The inspiring source may not be clearly 
indicated, but inspiration itself is as certain, as that vegetation 
is inspired and quickened into growth and maturity by the sun. 
The trance itself is a spiritual phenomenon, and its facts are 
spiritual, tried by the laws of both science and logic. 

Spiritualism, then, is a science, by authority of self-evident 
truth, observed fact, and inevitable deduction ; having within 
jtself all the elements upon which any science can found a claim 
Moreover, it is the all-comprehensive science of the sciences, with 
out which, all others are incomplete. The inferior, astronomy 



AS A SCIENCE. 2t 

repeals to us worlds in space, determines their periods, fixes their 
locality, and weighs them in a balance. The superior. Spirituals 
ism, reveals to us why these worlds are. It is the only science 
that can give the last analysis to the universal why, and translate 
into human consciousness, the real significance of all that is. 
Why then, in the name of reason, should it not commend itself 
to the lovers of truth and certainty, the world over ? Spiritual- 
ism must resolve that ivhy also, and the answer is ready — It does. 
Every truth-seeker, be he doctor of divinity or professor of the 
humanities, loves Spiritualism in the heart of him, whether he 
knows it or not; and there are many such. Recollect, it was only 
only the advent of Spiritualism which let the world into the secret 
that it believed in Mesmerism. There is an outside denial in many 
cases, which, interpreted by an expert, resolves itself into affirma- 
tion. The beautiful truth is self-commendatory. It is addressed 
to a universal question. Man loves to live ; it proclaims with 
the trump of an angel — thou shalt not die ! In the life of the 
animal, man may forget it ; in the life of tradition and church, 
imposed creeds and rituals, he may hate it, in the life of fashion 
and honorary position, he may despise and rfdicule it, but in the 
life of the Spirit, he is a Spiritualist. He who thinks he has 
faith in God and heaven, and hates Spiritualism is a juggler who 
cheats himself by the adroitness of his own trick. He who pro- 
fesses to love science, and shuts his eyes to the facts of Spiritual 
ism, is false to the name he bears. He is a traitor to science- 
though the whole alphabet were put under contribution for abbre- 
viations wherewith to express the titles and number of his hono- 
rary degrees. And the Doctor of Divinity who denounces it, is 
a quack in theology, though he occupy the divinity chair in the 
highest institutions on earth. 



Icctnu B> 

SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO ITS 
DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS, BOTH INTRINSIC AND 
EXTRINSIC. 

Having presented as much of the affirmative side of Spiritual- 
ism as the proposed limits of these Lectures will allow, it is but just- 
ice to present also some of the difficulties and objections, both in- 
trinsic and extrinsic, arising out of, and relating to it. 

First in the order of consideration, are those which present 
themselves to the student in the pursuit of his spiritual investiga- 
tions, and do so perplex him in his progress. Like the learner 
in any other school, he meets with problems hard to solve. 
Like the child at his arithmetic, the " rule" by which he has 
found the answer to so many " sums," seems to fail him at last 
in its application to one of greater intricacy of statement ; and as 
it refuses to yield to what he deems an honest application of the 
law of solution, he begins to doubt whether it be a " rule," and 
in the depth of his affliction, is tempted to cast aside his mathe- 
matics in sheer disgust and doubt of having demonstrated any 
truth whatever. It is comfortable to reflect, however, that with 
the child, a more matured intellect and deeper insight, finally lift 
him out of his quandary, and justify his arithmetic. 

May it not be even so with the student of Spiritualism ? For 
a time, he really seems to himself to have discovered some trutL, 
and to have made some progress. As for example, he feels that 
he did hear certain sounds which expressed intelligence, and dis- 
closed a knowledge of facts peculiar to some departed, but well- 
remembered relative or friend, and known only in this world to 
himself; or perhaps, the form of a beloved and well-known 
hand is presented to one or more of the senses, which perchance 
writes a sentence suggestive of its owner's old habits and ways of 
expressing thought ; or perhaps it enacts the early and never-to- 



SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED. 29 

be-forgotten caress of the observer's childhood, or beats the tune 
upon the table that lulled him to slumber in the hour of pain ; 
or perhaps it is laid upon his brow with that recognized sensation 
of blessing which the deepest and holiest human love alone can 
impart, bringing with it the blessed consciousness that the very air 
he breathes is balmy with the breath of angels, and that life's 
mystery is solved at last ! 

But anon, these angels depart from *de presence-chamber of 
his external consciousness, and he is left to the dull world of form, 
and fact, and creed, and theory again ; or rather, he is left upon 
the debatable ground, as it were, between two worlds whose facts 
and theories oppose each other ; and yet, for a time, both seem 
alike real and conclusive. In the world to which he is rapidly 
returning, is the grave-yard where lies the body (dismal reality 
that, surely), and that grave, both galvanic batteries and church 
creeds declare to be the " bourne, whence no traveler returns," 
before a resurrection, at least, of whatsoever Gabriel can find 
there, in a condition to be made fit to attend court on the " day 
of Judgment." In thai world too, are the jugglers, who put tow 
into their mouths, and straightway pull out whole yards of bright 
new ribbon, not a penny the worse for an hour's contact with the 
gastric juice — jugglers who swallow eggs, and after four seconds, 
instead of the old dull process of four weeks' incubation, extract 
live geese from their stomachs, and do it too, not in " dark circles," 
but in open gas-light ; and for the life of him, he can't tell 
why they donH do it, only, that somehow, he feels that they do 
not. And there is the ventriloquist with his miracles of sound, 
making murdered men talk in the cellar, and live people swear 
without saying a word ; and all these things are as real to the 
senses as the mother's hand which was laid in blessing upon his 
head ; and, as a question of fact, the only difference between 
them is, that somehow, the shadoivy hand feels to his soul like a 
reality, and the real doings of the juggler and the ventriloquist 
are felt in the same sensorium to be a sham, though the goose 
be real, and the ribbons and voice as genuine as any other. 
And there, too, is science with her psychology, converting rods 
into serpents, lamp-posts into veritable ghosts, and three-legged 
stools into hobgoblins ; perverting all the senses at will, and 
causing the subject to accept as true, whatever fantasy the ope- 



30 



SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 



rator chooses to impress upon his sensuous faculties. There also 
is the Church, with her legions of devils, never reducing the 
grand army by so much as a single imp even in time of peace, 
but with a regiment constantly under arms and ready to march 
at a moment's warning to assist in the bedevilment of mortals. 
And last, but least, though pious thought, there is her flying 
artillery of angels — literally flying — being veritable chubby little 
gentlemen with great spread of wing ; belonging not at all to the 
genus homo, but full of affection for it nevertheless, and equitably 
dividing their time between hovering over the nurseries of human 
baby-hood, and acting as trumpeters in ordinary to Jehovah. 

Conceive this enraptured auditor of the previous hour, alone 
in the theater where the enchanted drama of the immortals was 
enacted. The curtain down, the actors gone, and he left with 
the stage properties — the mere wooden machinery and disen- 
chanted reality of what so lately had seemed to be a scene from 
the great drama of the hereafter! He finds, perchance, an unpre- 
tending table and an inexperienced girl ! These are all the tangi- 
ble things — the only surviving realities of that enchanted hour. 
Will he not be likely to weigh the events of that hour, with 
these facts of the every-day world ? Will he not put Spiritual- 
ism in one scale, and jugglery, ventriloquism, psychology, and 
his holy religion with its legions of devils and angels (who, it is 
accurately ascertained, have no serious business on hand until 
after . the resurrection) into the other, to ascertain which will 
preponderate ? and will he not have some difficulty in settling 
the question of preponderance ? He will assuredly, unless he 
scrutinizes with an eye that can detect its minutest vibrations. 
He has a problem here, which, if he has neglected his multiplication 
and division, he will not be able to dispose of to his satisfaction 
or advantage. It is a law, not alone of the mathematics, but of 
the universe, that its most occult axioms can only be demon- 
strated by the aid of its simplest and most apparent truths. I re- 
call here a previous hint — that mere faith in the truth, helps us 
to the solution of no question. The boy may be sound in the faith 
that his arithmetic is a complete body of numerical divinity; but 
when he comes to " Tare and Tret/ 7 all he will be able to realize 
from his faith, will be a painful reminder of the truth of the old 
rythmical prophecy — truly it may cause him to " Swear and 



WITH REFERENCE TO ITS OBJECTIONS. 31 

Sweat," but it will solve never a problem. For example, psychol- 
ogy may be considered^n a sense, as one of the ground rules of the 
higher mathematics of Spiritualism. Suppose that in applying 
its multiplication, he sets it down that three times four are eight, 
he can never recover from the effect of that blunder, until he goes 
back and corrects it. 

The question of difficulty in the case of the observer of spiritual 
phenomena, simply stated, is this : How am I to satisfy myself that 
what I have been observing, is really what it claims to be ? In 
other words, Can I trust my own senses ? Now, the student 
has not to go into eternity to find the elements whereby to solve 
that problem, or to find a test by which to prove the accuracy 
of the work. The question is invariably mystified by the ridicu- 
lous, church-engendered assumption, in the first place, that every 
thing spiritual is supernatural, and hence, that the observer is in 
duty bound to slander his senses when they testify concerning 
spiritual things. He never thinks of impeaching their testimony 
when applied to familiar objects ; he is not disturbed by psycho- 
logical doubts, when he sees what is termed " a natural curi- 
osity," though he may never have even heard of it before in his 
life. But he complicates his difficulty by the assumption that, 
in his spiritual investigation he has been observing things un- 
natural, and by unconsciously trying to settle two questions, when 
in reality he has asked but one, he loses both himself and his 
question in a fog of his own creating. And it occurs in this 
way. Recollect, the question is as to the integrity of his senses 
with respect to certain things whereof they have testified ; that 
is to say, are they real ? Now it is seen, that he never asks that 
question when he sees an animal, or touches a thing that is 
entirely new to him; nor would he in the other case, were it not 
that he has most ingeniously involved the question of origin with 
the question of fact, and has demanded that his senses shall 
respond to both at the same time. He says truly, " I take the 
testimony of my senses when I examine a horse — he is a natural 
phenomenon ; but as applied to spiritual or Mtpematural things 
they are to be doubted." Here is the cheat : the question, so 
far as psychology is concerned, is not, as to whether they are 
spiritual or natural, but, have they really occurred ? It is for the 
reason, and not for the senses, to determine the question of cause. 



32 



SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 



The senses only inform us of facts ; the use of them belongs to 
the province of reason. Clear the problem of spiritual manifes- 
tations from this most ingenious and common swindle, and the 
question of psychological illusion, jugglery, and deception, will 
no more apply to its facts of observation, than to any other ; 
and the ground upon which he predicates the integrity of his 
senses with respect to the reality of a horse, will vindicate their 
truthfulness with respect to every other object within their 
range. 

Now, the process by which he undertakes to satisfy himself 
that he has really sensed a horse, may be stated after this man- 
ner. His own reality is a self-evident fact of his own con- 
sciousness — there is no disputing about that : he feels that he is, 
and the competency of his own senses to testify as to appearances 
is tested by this primary fact of consciousness : that is to say, 
he is conscious of a certain internal sensation as of a wound upon 
the body; he examines, and finds it there ; and by repeated 
comparisons between consciousness and appearance, he demon- 
strates, not by logic but by consciousness, that his senses can tell 
the truth — not that they always do, but that they can ; and 
when they do not, it is not necessarily a fault of theirs. When 
the eyes are open and perfect, and the day is clear, they must 
reflect images, as certainly as a looking-glass reflects faces : no 
psychologist can prevent that ; he can at best but change the 
condition of the subject, so that his consciousness fails in the 
perfect appreciation of what they say. But remember, this 
admitted change of condition — this temporary inability to hear 
and determine with the usual accuracy — proves the soundness of 
its opposite condition. Deception can only be affirmed from the 
stand-point of absolute integrity. This leaves the only question 
to be settled, as to whether an observed object is real or illusory — 
a question as between these two states or conditions of the sub- 
ject ; that is, when I assert that I see a man, its truthfulness to 
myself will depend upon what, for convenience, is called my 
normal or abnormal condition at the time, both being real states 
of the individual. The question then by the last analysis, is 
narrowed down to one of conditions. The tug of war is to 
settle what was my state when I supposed myself to be observing 
and examining a horse. But before entering the battle-field, it 



WITH REFERENCE TO ITS OBJECTIONS. 33 

is necessary to consider man in three phases of his manifestation 
here in the body, 

Firstly. There is what is called the normal, or regular and 
ordinary state, in which the integrity of his judgment as to the 
things of sense, is admitted. 

Secondly. There is the state ofpsychomachy, a condition of conflict 
of the spirit with its body or external organism, during which the 
consciousness which belongs to the first, or normal, or sensuous 
plane of the man, is disturbed and can not act with its accus- 
tomed vivacity and precision. This state is induced from many 
causes, what is popularly termed psychology among the number. 

Thirdly. There is a state of trance, in which the subject 
manifests perfect consciousness of being, knowing and observing 
phenomena; but during which, the external senses do not testify 
or act at all. 

Here are three well marked manifestations of the same indi- 
vidual, together with double consciousness ; for the things of 
the trance are not, in most instances, deposited in the memory 
of the normal consciousness, showing by this fact, not only that 
there are two, but that each keeps its own record. The 
debatable ground as to what the senses say, is in the psycho- 
ma chy or disturbance between these two ; and the preliminary 
inquiry is, how far is this normal or every-day consciousness 
vitiated or injured by the conflict? Apparently it is totally 
dethroned. But it is not so. The so-called psychological sub- 
ject is as conscious in a degree, as any other person, that the rod 
serpent of his senses is not a real serpent after all, though it has 
nearly the effect of one upon his emotions. This is the concur- 
rent testimony of many subjects, and would seem to establish 
the postulate, that whenever the senses testify at all, there is a 
court of consciousness ever competent in some degree to weigh 
the evidence they offer. The things of the trance are not brought 
to the inner consciousness by the external senses. They are not 
witnesses in that court, only in the outer. Neither are the 
illusions charged against the senses ever practiced upon this 
inner consciousness. When that is led astray, it is not through 
their agency. Each state or consciousness manifests its appro- 
priate organism of sensation, and hence it is physiologically 
rational, as well as being the testimony of the subjects of 
2* 



34 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

psychology, that the facts of the senses are ever more or less 
scrutinized by an accompanying consciousness, which performs 
duty as interpreter ; so that, if a man's senses really report 
to him a stick, he can not while looking at it, be wholly driven 
from the consciousness that it is not a snake, though it may seem 
to shake its tail. The consciousness which always acts with the 
senses, is fortified by the memory of other observations, as well 
as being a power and a test of veracity in itself ; and it 
instinctively brings its native and acquired powers to bear upon 
whatever is presented, as a General scans the behavior of his 
troops. This is why the juggler, while he plays upon the senses, 
can not cheat the consciousness : that knows all the while that 
his apparent facts are not what they seem ; and every juggler 
involuntarily bows to its decision by not pretending that they 
are. 

Having defined the boundary of this limbo of Psychomachy, 
in so far as to show that its illusions, after all, are more apparent 
than real as applied to questions of fact, I return to the question 
of tests as to condition. And first, it is to be observed, that the 
normal or regular condition is the rule, and the others are the 
exceptions ; and secondly, that even the subjects of the other 
states are not in them all the time, but only a small portion of 
it ; the conclusion from which is, that every man sees objects 
correctly the greater part of the time, and most men all the 
time. Again, it is to be considered that the state has its pre- 
monitory symptoms both internal and external, relatively pro- 
portionate to its intensity of action. It rarely takes the subject 
by surprise, and need not deceive the expert observer. At least, 
he who has once experienced it knows it, and knows something 
of the means or causes which induce it ; and he who has 
thoroughly studied it, knows its indications, and knows they are 
as marked as the symptoms of any other state. 

Now let the observer banish conjecture and baseless specula- 
tion, and take this staff of knowledge in his hand, and see if he 
can not finally settle the question as to whether he has ever really 
seen a horse. And the rule by which he settles that fact, will 
settle every other. Having applied the rule in his own case, let 
him next consider the vast number and variety of spiritual facts, 
and the multitudes of persons who have witnessed them, himself 



WITH REFERENCE TO ITS OBJECTIONS. 35 

being of the number, and then let him cheat his consciousness 
with the theory of their psychological unreality, if he can. To 
test the real weight of this inflated psychological difficulty as ap- 
plied to spiritual facts, the observer has only to raise the same 
objection to the fact of a rock that he does to the fact of a 
Spirit ; for as it affects the reality of the former, so must it be 
with the latter ; that is, to the consciousness, on the evidence of 
the senses, they are both realities or they are both shams ; and if 
it would be unwise for a man who looks upon the falls of Niag- 
ara for the first time, thence to conclude that he had been the 
victim of fantasy, it can not be rationally claimed as an honor to 
his scientific proficiency, to adopt that conclusion with re- 
spect to any other thing, because he had not observed it before, 
It is also to be noticed, that the facts of jugglery, the myths 
of psychology, and the facts of Spiritualism as observed through 
the senses, have exactly opposite effects upon the consciousness. 
It rejects the former, though the senses seem to affirm their real- 
ity, and is instinctively disposed to accept the latter, though the 
understanding and all former experience cry out " incredible." 
This difference in the reception of facts, equally impressing the 
senses, belongs to a chapter of evidence in behalf of Spiritualism, 
which can not be dissected, and refuses to be transferred to paper. 
It is written only upon the soul of the individual ; to be under- 
stood, it must be felt. It is born of the affection of natural affin- 
ity, and is a portion of love's own private memoranda of testi- 
mony, too sacred for any court of record. Affection has its laws, 
as well as the solar system. Like caloric, which resides in all 
bodies, though it crops out to the senses only when it takes on 
a certain degree of activity which causes us to feel its heat, and 
know it to be a reality, though we may not see the fire ; so, when 
affection is active, we feel the presence of the inspiring source, 
and the soul responds from the depth of her own love, to the 
truthfulness of the facts of her external observation; and thus the 
sum proves both ways — the facts of consciousness and the facts 
of the senses accord. But this is not the case with the wooden 
facts of the necromancer, nor with the hypothetical creations of 
the psychologist. There is no human love in a myth ; an ideal 
creation can not beget affection upon consciousness. The careful 
student of psychology will never find it a stumbling-block in the 



36 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

way when he becomes a careful student of Spiritualism, but 
quite the contrary. It is the ignoramus only, who gets himself 
confounded. 

A singular objection to Spiritualism, or rather an hypoth- 
esis referring its phenomena, whether of ancient or modern 
times, to the witnesses as a cause, has appeared from time to 
time in the Spiritual Telegraph, and other papers. 

This hypothesis admits the phenomena, and accounts 
for them as follows. Man is a complex of the uses of his an- 
cestry, and his memory is the organism of their uses in him ; 
that is to say, the means by which they are represented or 
manifested to him. That the state of active affection with one 
of these flows into the memory or organism of his use or uses, 
and actually projects the embodied form of that use, in time 
and space, as it originally appeared. As thus : The memory 
of my father is the organism of his uses in me, and as I come 
into the affection of one or more of these uses of him, that af- 
fection, flowiug into the organism of himself in me, becomes to 
my senses an objective representation of himself, either wholly 
or in part, to me. If, for instance, I am in the affection of 
the use of his hand performing a remembered act, the hand 
will appear and do that very act, and so on. 

This hypothesis admits that man is a Spirit, and affirms the 
perpetuity of his conscious individuality, by reason of his 
being the form of a specific and perpetual use, denying only 
that such manifestations as, in both ancient and modern times, 
are ascribed to what is popularly called spiritual causes, are 
really so, in that sense of the term, and affirming their self- 
caused projection from that of the things manifested; which 
things or uses of the ancestry are latent as to the external con- 
sciousness, in the observer. For a full statement of this 
hypothesis, together with the grounds upon which it rests, see 
Spiritual Telegraph of September 5, 1857, and succeding 
numbers. 

I am unable to accept this hypothesis as an explanation of 
the origin of spiritual phenomena, for several reasons : 

1. The hypothesis is not self-consistent, as it appears to me. It 
admits, for example, that my father is a spiritual entity, or form 
of use, and that he did once manifest that use, which is him- 



WITH REFERENCE TO ITS OBJECTIONS. 8^ 

self, to me; but denies that he can do so any longer — when, for 
example, he only, or those who are on a plane with him, which 
is the same thing, can be of efficient use to me in a certain 
emergency, which will be explained below; which is virtually 
saying, that use, which is man, and by which alone man is, can 
not be perpetually useful — can not always manifest itself in 
love to the neighbor, though use be the animus of that love. 

To illustrate : A man after the most careful application of 
his best powers to the subject, is forced to the conclusion that 
death destroys all human consciousness. Now, it is use or love 
to the neighbor to endeavor so to set the facts of nature, and 
the deductions flowing from them, before the recipient of this 
unhappy conclusion, that, if possible, he may see good cause to 
reverse it. No believer in the immortality which this hypoth- 
esis admits, for a moment questions the utility of such a work. 
But it fails ; and during the first forty years of the present 
century had failed with increased rapidity. Up to within the 
last ten years the decrease of faith in a conscious existence be- 
yond the grave, had been in the ratio of the increase in the 
knowledge of the facts of science. This plain matter of fact 
stood forth in this nineteenth century, making constant pro- 
gress against all the uses of man on this side the grave — a 
great and growing need; and by this hypothesis there is no one 
to perform the uses which it demands. It presents immor- 
tality on the basis of perpetual use, and denies the power of 
useing in a direction where, as seen, man, or a form of use 
from beyond the grave, alone can act with the required 
efficiency. 

2, As seen above, it affirms that my father, for example, could 
and did once flow into my proprium, so as to become in a cer- 
tain sense, the organism of his representation in me, and then 
stops this flow, but does not exhibit the valve which cuts it off. 
It first admits the perpetuity of human uses, aud their prior 
activity or useing, but denies their perpetual flow; that is to 
say, my father was once a form of use to me through the mani- 
festation of himself to me, but is so no longer. This hypoth- 
esis, applied to the distributing reservoir of the Croton water 
( which is as well the form of a use to me, as my father is, or 
was), will be difficult of credence. By means of it, that fluid 



38 



SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 



flows into and becomes the organic forms of its uses in all who 
partake of it; but having once done that, it is no longer 
necessary; the water may be cut off at the fountain. Both 
my father and the distributing reservoir, have ceased to be uses 
on their respective planes of use, their uses being once organ- 
ized in me. But to affirm that that which is man, or the di- 
vine proceeding of eternal use into the/o?*ra of eternal use, does 
finally cease to be a use, is to pronounce upon him the sentence 
of scientific annihilation. 

3. As seen, my father having become the organism of his 
use in me, I, forever after, am able by the volition of the invol- 
untary or ganglionic side of my spiritual powers, to flow into 
that organism, and by means of it to reproduce the forms of all 
his uses ; that is to say, whenever I come into the affection of 
a use of my father, corresponding to his hand doing that use, 
I do objectively create his hand actually performing it; and so 
on throughout, even to his standing before me in time and 
space, recreated from myself, by the occult powers of my invol- 
untary spiritual physiology to flow into the complex unity of 
the organisms of his uses in me. If this be so, then, so far as I 
can see, is my father annihilated, and God with him, by ceasing 
to be any longer useful to whatsoever they did once flow into. 
i" have become the Creator. When I require my father, I can 
produce him from myself, and when I come into affection with 
the divine in me, on the same principle I become omnipotent. 
The universe and its creator being within myself, who am the 
continent of the organisms of their uses, I can reproduce them 
from myself; and hence, whatever there might have been 
once, there is now nothing substantial in the universe but my- 
self 7 And yet, when I come to apply this hypothesis, I find, 
despite my omnipotence, that although the Croton water is 
present in me, and I often come into affection with it, I have 
never yet been able to produce the distributing reservoir, which 
is its continent in a gross sense, anywhere save on Manhattan 
Island where, for the present, it makes its only physical mani- 
festation. 

4. The hypothesis has no facts. Principles are in perpetual 
potence; if, therefore, the doctrine be SDund, one man can re- 
produce the objective presence of another, whilst that other is 
in the body, as well as after he has left it. Now, to be ap- 



WITH REFERENCE TO ITS OBJECTIONS. 39 

proved as sound, it must be able to show the objective fac 
simile of the hand of a person performing real acts in time and 
space, the original of the representation at the same time be- 
longing to a man in the body. For example : Hands repre- 
senting those once belonging to persons who have departed this 
life, are known to move ponderable bodies. The fact required 
is, the presence of such a hand, doing the same thing, its origi- 
nal proprietor not having departed this life. It is not the ap- 
parition merely of a living person, which will meet the case, 
but an appearance that can do something which will leave the 
visible marks of its presence behind it, as hands representing 
those of departed persons are known to do. Obviously, if the 
hypothesis will cover the facts of the higher life, it will also 
those of the lower, and hence it must be true, that so soon as 
the child has received his parents by influx, and has become the 
spiritual organism of their uses, he need not wait until they 
have left the body, to air his creative power; he may be in the 
cornfield, and they comfortably seated at dinner five miles dis- 
tant, and be able to produce them, if the doctrine will hold, and 
cause them to aid him in ejecting the pigs therefrom, by simply 
flowing into the affection of their use in that direction, already 
organized in him. 

5. It is against fact. Nature, so far as our observation ex- 
tends, develops all her forms from germs ; whereas by this 
hypothesis, a man not only can create his own father, but can 
do it independently of natural method. For example, A., B., 
and C. sit conversing upon some topic engrossing their whole 
attention, when a seventh hand obtrudes itself upon their no- 
tice. Now, the six hands belonging to the said A., B., and 
C, are produced by the established method of organic growth, 
but the seventh hand, whose grasp is as firm, and whose mo- 
tions are as intelligent, and everything about it as real, as the 
others, is not a proceeding like these, but is the individual, or 
conjoint product of the unconscious volition of A., B., and C.'s 
states ! Here is not only a new Creator, but a new process of 
creation, and one never observed in the production of anything 
save that which represents the forms and acts of persons who 
have left the present life. 

6. It is not possible for one form of use to flow into another 



40 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

to the subversion of its own uses, except at the expense of its 
identity. When animal uses are incorporated with the human in 
the organism of the human, animal identity is lost. Hence, if 
one germ-life can flow into another, so that the receptive life 
can thereafter reproduce all the manifestations of the first, then, 
as in the case of the animal, is its identity lost in that other, 
In this transfer of uses, use having culminated, identity, by 
strict law of divine economy, must terminate. Such influx 
would be contrary to Divine order, and, as between two im» 
mortal identities, would be impossible. It is pushing the law of 
influx to the point of self-annihilation. The inspiring spirit is 
lost, both as to use and identity, in the creative possibilities of 
the soul it has inspired. 

7. It does not accord with the observed law of influx on 
lower planes of manifestation. For example, iron is the organic 
form of the uses of its ancestors, among which is magnetism. 
Its presence is essential to the manifestation of that metal, and 
as a producing element or ancestral trait in the organism of 
iron, its behavior is uniform. But iron can be inspired by its 
magnetic ancestor in person, so to speak, and then, without the 
slightest perversion of these ancestral traits, the aforesaid an- 
cestor performs uses through it. That it is the ancestor in 
person, and not merely his traits existing in the subject or child, 
is known from the fact that the iron never manifests the new 
power, except through the presence of the foreign agent. 

For these reasons, I conclude that the hypothesis is of au- 
thority and not of fact. As, for example, when my senses re- 
veal to me a human hand at three o'clock p. m., of a clear day, 
it admits that it is the form of a use developed from a germ by 
a universal and orderly method. But if in five minutes there- 
after, the same senses reveal to me another hand, it affirms by 
authority of itself, and against universal order, that that hand 
is not an unfolded germ, but the offspring of my state; which 
looks like affirming that divine order can perform uses in dis- 
order. 

But there are difficulties arising from other sources— the diffi- 
culty of satisfactory identification as evinced by the common use of 
the phrase — " purporting to be the Spirit of," etc., etc., which 
indicates of course, that the narrator is uncertain. Also the in- 



WITH REFERENCE TO ITS OBJECTIONS. 41 

definite or incomprehensible statements with respect to the 
modes of spiritual existence, etc., etc. These do perpetually be- 
set the student at every renewed attempt at solution. The de- 
clarations of media bewilder rather than enlighten him, and 
the whole problem grows dark, as he tries in vain to penetrate 
its mysteries. 

In pondering these difficulties, let him first impress this truism 
upon his soul — the desire for knowledge, must forever overleap its 
gratification. Let him call to mind also, that the knowledge or 
comprehension of any fact, comes to him only by addressing a 
consciousness able to respond to the truth of the fact he would 
understand. We can not speak of color to a man born without 
sight, so as to enable him to conceive of it as we do. Let him 
remember that the new life also implies new conditions, which 
can but very imperfectly address themselves to our external con- 
sciousness, for the reason that we have not yet entered upon 
it. The musquito begins his life in the water and ends 
it in the air ; how much can there be in his fishy consciousness, 
able to respond to his life among the birds ? Suppose a full- 
blown butterfly to attempt the education of a grub with respect 
to the realities of its winged glory ; we can readily conceive of 
insurmountable difficulties attending such an effort. We can see 
at a glance, how difficult it might be for a grandfather butterfly, as 
he stoops from his perch among the flowers to sweep the dull 
earth with his painted wing, to inspire his grandson grub, with 
the knowledge of how he does it, or to give him a realizing sense 
of his joyous existence in his realm of freedom, and his new tab- 
ernacle of beauty. Man is an angel in the life of a grub ; and 
like the butterfly in the same state, he must await the unfolding 
from the chrysalis before he can enter the senior class in the col- 
lege of the higher life. The student who sees the necessity 
which makes this law imperative elseivhere, will not quarrel long 
with its rigid observance in the college of spiritual science, where 
titles can not be purchased, and honorary degrees never go by 
favor. He will consider rather, the wonderful wisdom and inti- 
mate knowledge of natural law, by which alone the higher life 
has been revealed to his consciousness through the external 
senses, in any of the phases of its reality — that heaven has 
touched the earth at all — that it has been able to reach the anx- 



42 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

ious ; doubting heart of man in any way, and to convert the dull, 
inanimate conveniences of an earthly household, into the minis- 
ters and missionaries of its Gospel — at once revealing the sub- 
limest theme of science, and the deepest incentive to devotion. 
His wonder will be, not that he can find out so little, but that he 
can learn so much ; not that it is so difficult to make the identity 
manifest in every case, but that it can be done in any case. He 
will rationally infer from the wonderful chemistry which makes 
letters out of living flesh and blood, and unmakes them at will, 
from the knowledge which guides a pen by simple contact of im- 
ponderable forces, and causes it to write with the skill of an ex- 
pert, that there have been many difficulties to overcome in the 
way of physical manifestation ; which difficulties, assuming that 
spiritual beings are human beings, ^and that in the life of the 
Spirit, as in that of the body, they acquire knowledge, not by 
miracle, but by insight and application, must have required ages 
to overcome ; and hence, that the spiritual telegraph is as much 
a new discovery as that of Morse, and that it is still improvable. 
The difficulty or objection that they are demons instead of hu- 
mans, who do these things, is a self-imposed affliction. It argues 
another obstacle to be overcome by the immortals — an obstacle 
arising from the inaptness of the scholars they fain would teach. 
To get a scientific, philosophical, or moderately rational idea of 
spiritual things into the head of a mortal occupied by the devil 
and his family of cognate absurdities, consider the difficulties of 
it. Show him a new thing, the devil is at the bottom of it. 
All that he does not understand, is of the devil. The devil is the 
fourth, and most potential and practical person in his trinity, who 
lays out all the work for the other three — the fifth wheel to his 
car of progress, which does nothing but trip the others up. Ob- 
viously, this devil must be turned out before any valuable truth 
can be got in ; and where is the fulcrum in such a mind, for the 
lever of riddance to rest upon ? His philosophy is fog ; his facts 
are tradition. The man who would remove the stumbling-block 
of demonology from his path, must plant his lever, not upon a 
pope, a book, a creed, but upon a principle — upon the great 
principle of use — God, who requires both eternity and infinite 
space for its manifestation, and has therefore not an inch of ter- 
ritory, nor one moment of time to yield to the production or ex- 



WITH REFERENCE TO ITS OBJECTIONS. 43 

istence of any form of evil, either here or hereafter. He who 
has found God, can find no room for the devil. The man who 
sets up that scare-crow in the path of his progress, reads his Bi- 
ble like a parrot, and sees the eternal things of God in nature 
vpside down ; and there is no help for him but to go back and 
begin right-end up. It is not possible for a man to ascend the 
hights of rational and scientific truth, with his heels in the air, 
and his head in a creed. 

But if they be not demons, that is to say, forms of intelligence 
below the human in virtue and morality, (and such beings, we 
are told every Sunday, are very hard, if not impossible, to find) may 
not these Spirits be the angels we read of in the sacred books ? 
I answer by asking : Is it consistent with scientific methods to 
assume the reality of a thing, and then set up the thing assumed 
as an objection ? It is the office of science rather to inquire 
into assumption. These theological angels, like the demons, are 
unknown to science and to fact ; or rather, science knows that 
they are not. The existence of these angels who are said to con- 
stitute a separate and higher genus, is not conceivable by the rea- 
son, from the fact that we can not think beyond the human. God, 
to all finite conception, is the occult human, and man is the high- 
est manifestation of his personality. Or, granting some mighty 
theologian should break down this wall of the impossible, and 
reveal to us a winged order of higher perfection, how would it 
comport with their full-blown glory to be counterfeiting the rela- 
tives and Mends of mortals on the earth — juggling with us year 
after year, and manufacturing for us faith in God and immortality 
out of false pretences ? Is it compatible with the assumption of 
a higher order, thus to turn the earnest efforts of man after spir- 
itual truth into a farce, and lie and cheat to do it, when man him- 
self has even got so far as to set it down on paper, that all 
cheating is immoral ? The man who leaves the unstable and 
dreamy marches of poetical tradition, for the solid ground of fact 
and principle, will never be troubled by the question of theologi- 
cal angels, nor by the presence of church devils. In short, the 
man who sets out to investigate Spiritualism, will stumble and 
fall at every step, or go on with comparative safety and ease, ac- 
cording to the guide he elects at the beginning, and the fidelity 
with which he follows him. There is no safe guidance in blind 



44 SPIRITUALISM CONSIDERED 

tradition. If he shuts his own eyes and follows that, he will 
surely land in a ditch, or into a sectarian church, which is worse, 
and much harder to get out of. His own soul, and the science 
of fact, is the sure and steadfast guide. Things, and not author- 
ity, must be the lamp to his feet, and the light to his path. 

Turning, in conclusion, to the extrinsic objections to Spiritual- 
ism, it may be said that, as a science, it has nothing to do with 
the objections and cries of "humbug," "impossible," and " incon- 
sistent," which arise outside of an examination of its facts. These 
croakings come from the hollow depths of the modern pulpit, and 
are echoed back from the professor's chair, but they are the babble 
of children, come from whence they may, and science walks with 
men. The student enters her temple to learn, not to dictate ; to 
inquire, not to prejudge. Let the Doctor of Divinity hurl his 
sacred books at the laws of nature, and shake his holy fist at the 
manifestation of God's life in her, until he tires of that religious 
exercise : what matter ? " The world moves, after all." Schol- 
astic theology (the only theology that opposes Spiritualism now 
or ever), never yet demonstrated a single fact to the world. It 
is " the old man of the sea," on the back of the nations, which 
has ridden them like a nightmare from generation to generation. 
He alone who feels him to be an incubus, can throw him on\ 
Let others carry him till they are weary, for then, and then only, 
can Spiritualism give them rest. It is not adapted to the needs 
of a world in its infancy; when authority alone can direct its fee- 
ble steps, it is not adapted to men in this age with the minds of 
children. He who is content to be told what to think and what 
to do, he who accepts a white cravat, or a cocked hat, as an in- 
fallible token of divine wisdom and absolute truth, for the time 
needs no other, and can have no other. A god in a cocked hat 
or a white cravat, is the divinest god he can conceive of for the 
present ; let him worship in peace. Spiritualism is not for such. 
It addresses their future, not their present. It is the need of a 
man. It addresses itself to manhood, and challenges a man's 
thought. Its reign begins when authority fails — when the fetters 
of childhood are broken. Beautiful beyond expression arc its 
fields of fact, and its blossoms of induction. To the lover of 
nature, they are a perpetual glory ; to the hungry soul, they are 
the bread of life ; to the devout soul, they are a perpetual in- 
cense ; to the mourning soul, a perpetual joy. 



WITH REFERENCE TO ITS OBJECTIONS. 45 

Its answer to those who object that it refutes the Bible is, 
study your Bible in the light of its facts, and the objection will 
vanish like the fog that it is ; and further, that it must be 
studied in this light, or not be understood. Experience alone 
gives comprehension. You cannot vote yourself a Biblical 
scholar — you need somewhat more than a knowledge of Greek 
and Hebrew, to be that. Your Bible has to do with facts and 
principles — it is a record of what God has done in nature. Re- 
fusing to see him work to-day, and to work with him, it is not 
for you to pass upon the record of yesterday's labor. It is for 
the living artist, not the plowman, to judge the merits of the 
" old masters." Those only who have looked, and loved, and 
labored in the same school, can speak understanding^ of their 
truth and beauty, of their lights and shades. The inexperts, 
who for so many generations have, had control of that splendid 
gallery of word painting and symbolic statuary, have placed 
their best pictures in a false light, and dressed their symbols to 
look like Punches. They have so managed it, that the world 
has seen their defects mostly. Their great beauty and truthful- 
ness has been so obscured by the dust of prejudice and the green 
mold of inflated ignorance, that the world was fast being driven 
away in sheer disgust and denial of there being either truth or 
beauty to be found in the whole collection. 

It is for Spiritualism alone to dispel this sad mistake. It is 
for Spiritualism alone to remove this dust and moid, and to re- 
store these wonderful pictures to their true position, that the 
world may see them in their original grandeur. Spiritualism is 
a genuine iconoclast — it breaks nothing but images ; it mars 
naught that has life in it. It is fatal to shams, but it hurts no 
true thing. It can wait for the children to grow into the need 
of it, and for their intellects to expand into a comprehension of 
its true value ; even as God caused Jesus to wait for the Jews 
to outgrow Moses, and the Romans to become sick of Jupiter. 
It can labor, as the husbandman labors when he sows his seed, 
and wait, even as he waits for the coming harvest. It " casts 
its toread upon the waters" with confidence, for it knows full 
well that the world, though it be "after many days," shall find 
it, and the nations shall become strong in its truth. 



ftcttntc 4. 

THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED, 

Our clerical friends and their followers do sometimes object, 
that the Spiritualist is a visionary ; that all his desire for knowl- 
edge concerning the future life is but a vain curiosity, and is 
wholly barren of practical results. The objector says of himself, 
that he is religiously disposed to remain in his present ignorance 
of the facts of immortality until he enters upon their possession 
in person ; that the light which shone in Judea in the olden 
time, has exhausted both the needful and the possible in the way 
of knowledge with respect to the higher life, and that the true 
concern of the Christian is with this world and its duties. 

There are Spiritualists who make the same complaint of inu- 
tility on the part of certain of their brethren. These complain 
that nothing of earthly value is attempted on their part; that no 
plans for the amelioration of the existing evils of the present 
social condition are proposed, or put in requisition ; that they 
are perpetually glorifying the A, B, C of Spiritualism, watching 
the motions of their household furniture, and talking about mes- 
merism and the laws of interpolation, when they should be form- 
ing protective unions, or organizing industrial and social pha- 
lanxes, according to the tremendous axioms of " sociology," or 
pursuant to the directions of supernal wisdom, filtered through a 
teaching-medium, who is supposed to be thoroughly qualified to 
instruct, by reason of his being able to talk with his eyes shut. 
And yet those against whom this complaint is made, do suppose 
themselves to be somewhat practical. True, they plead guilty 
to the crime of laying great stress upon facts, and would gene- 
rally prefer spiritual knocking to the majority of Sabbath day 
preaching. My object is to inquire where the truth lies in this 
matter of utility. 

One thing is certain : a man can not navigate the Atlantic 



THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 47 

Ocean with a paper ship. His vessel must be as substantial as 
the elements with which she has to contend. Neither can he 
depend wholly upon his log-book and his dead reckoning ; there 
must be sunshine and a polar star— something by which to test 
his calculations. He requires also a fixed object, whence to take 
his bearings at the commencement of his voyage, else his calcu- 
lations may wholly mislead him. It will not do, when about to 
enter upon the trackless waters, to take his bearings and distance 
from another ship, though she carry the flag of a rear-admiral at 
the fore. A rocky cliff on terra firma is better adapted to his 
necessities. 

Neither is the sea of opinion — the sea of human needs — the 
great ocean of mentality — to be explored in a paper bark. Its 
hidden currents, its surging waves, lashed into fury by the winds 
of conflicting doctrine, are fatal to mere paper vessels, however 
ingeniously framed or artistically decorated. He who ventures 
upon this sea, also requires a fixed starting-point. He can not 
take his bearings from a treatise on navigation, neither can he 
depend wholly upon his logarithms. He, too, requires an occa- 
sional glimpse of the sun by day, and a fixed star for his guid- 
ance by night. Think of it — a practical man venturing on such 
a voyage as this in a ship builded wholly of words — written 
words ; her hull a book, coppered and copper-fastened with com- 
mentaries, and manned and officered by expounders! — a ship 
whose ribs are not live oak, but the lives and epistles of apostles 
and Christian fathers. Think of it — a man thus furnished forth, 
taking his bearings from nowhere, closing his eyes to the light of 
heaven, as a religious duty and genuine test of a good sailor, and 
firmly resolving to avoid the north star, and to shape his course 
by the history of it ; and then consider how the word practical 
sounds as applied to him. We read of three wise men of Goth- 
am, who went to sea in a bowl. Were they practical ? 

Or, take that other solemn mortal who has found out by cud- 
gelling his own brains, that there is no shore to the sea of human 
destiny and human thought — no granitic promontory whence to 
shape a course ; that its islands are all afloat, like himself ; who 
sits enshrouded by the smoke of his own intellectual lamp, and 
by reason of his inability to see beyond it, sagely concludes there 
is nothing there. Are we to set him down as a utilitarian ? 



48 THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 

Consider the goodly fleets belonging to every nation under 
the sun, that have set sail in every age, and not a ship of them 
all came unbroken to land, thousands upon thousands lying at 
this moment at the bottom, and tens of thousands of them going 
there with the certainty of fate. Is this being practical ? If so, 
what is speculation ? Then, we have naval architects of a more 
modern and progressive type, who build them ships out of the 
white oak of pure science and the locust and cedar of positive 
philosophy — men who build Leviathans which never get them- 
selves launched, and are men of science for that reason, and are 
practical philosophers in their own right, because they never 
make any thing but theeries. Well, we may admit the science, 
but their character as utilitarians would be all the clearer for 
more proof. The machinist who should construct an engine that 
did nothing but lurst itself, and damage the shins of every un- 
lucky wight who seeks to profit by its scientific advantages, could 
scarcely claim it as a proof of his practical skill. 

Then we are blessed with two divisions of practical Spiritual 
ists. These build their ships of the same solid timber, and sail 
under the same flag, but steer different courses. Of these it 
may be said, that they agree in this : They profess a kindred 
love for Spiritualism, and a fraternal contempt for all that de- 
monstrates it to the senses. The ladder whereon both ascend 
to immortality, is builded wholly of words. Agreeing on these 
points, and also on this other, that the factarians are mere theo- 
rists, they take leave of their unity at this point, and firing 
a gun in the fog by way of signal to the fleet that they are 
going into action without waiting for day-light, they pro- 
ceed on their different courses. The one battles for a new social 
order on the earth, and the other for a new church. Both are to 
- be established on the same broad basis; that is to say, upon words, 
with this difference, to be sure, that sacred words are to found 
the new church, and scientific words the new state. And this 
is held to be the true and practical idea of the conjugal rela- 
tion to be established after the battle is over, between science 
and religion. 

Far be it from me to impeach either the integrity of purpose 
or the utility of the objects sought to be secured by these in- 
dustrials ; but from what fixed fact in the realm of reality do 



THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 49 

they commence their reckoning ? By what polar star do they 
steer for the new church, and the new state they have set out 
to reach ? By the dead reckoning, they would seem to have 
nearly reached their destination ; but by the chronometer and 
quadrant they have been sailing in a circle. Their claim to 
progress and practicality consists mainly in conferring new 
names upon old errors, and in giving new forms to old mis- 
takes ; that is to say, whereas man limped east under the old dis- 
pensation, he limps west under the new. When you look 
sharply into the face of this New Church, you discover that it 
is the old one in a new bonnet. The same hard, dry features, 
the same step-mother air, the same befringed and fantastically- 
embroidered knitting sheath and pin-cushion ; aye, and the same 
authoritative birch, are there as of old, disguised under the thin 
coating of a few out-of-the-way phrases, and these not the off- 
spring of their practical genius, but borrowed for the occasion 
(without leave) from Emanuel Swedenborg. When you exam- 
ine the new state or proposed system of social order, it is found 
to be the old one gone to seed. It is machinery supplanting 
machinery — sin applying the principle of homoeopathy to Satan 
— the old state with new rulers, only they are not to derive 
their authority, as in the present wicked way, from the people 
but, as of old, from the Lord, through his seer, who is a seer 
because he has seen his own and his disciples' faces in a glass, 
and can shut his eyes and snuffle. And this botching of old 
clothes with new cloth, this pouring of new wine into dilapi- 
dated goat skins, is called doing something for God and hu- 
manity — being eminently progressive and practical. 

I say again, far be it from me to undervalue the earnestness 
and sincerity of our practical friends, but would it not be well 
to look either back or forward, whichever you will, of this 
word Spiritualism, and instead of sitting up o'nights to hate 
facts, try to understand them ? The Baptist says to the Pres- 
byterian, and both say to the Methodist, " Well, brother, it 
makes no difference by what road you reach heaven, provided 
you only get there," which might be true, perhaps, were heaven 
a cube, like the New Jerusalem, instead of a state, and it had 
not been discovered eighteen hundred years before they were 
born, that there was but one path that, led into it — but one door 
3 



50 THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 

through which humanity can enter. A man pays himself no 
compliment when he says, with an air of triumph, it may be — 
i" believe in God and immortality ; it is not yet certain that he 
has really said anything; at least a parrot can be taught to say as 
much. The magnitude of the saying is determined by the why 
and the wherefore of it. Your God and your immortality, in 
name, and by solemn profession, have been the starting-point 
whence every voyager on the sea of ethics has shaped his 
course ; but on inquiry we learn that by God they understand 
a Divinity who is supposed to have presided over the temporal 
welfare of three ancient Jews, and not the God of and in the 
universe, at all — a God seated on a throne somewhere, and do- 
ing whatever pleases him until it displeases him, and then doing 
something else. By immortality, we learn that they mean a 
miraculous resurrection of dry bones — some time or other. It is 
to turn out exceedingly felicitous to all who accept a certain 
plan or scheme, with a sure prospect of eternal calcination in a 
hot place for those who do not accept it. Now, these head- 
lands whence they take their bearings and distance, are the 
same in name with those that exist on the terra firma of eternal 
fact, but only in name. The misfortune is, that no man can fix 
their latitude and longitude. They loom up to these voyagers 
like mirage, from the imperfect refraction of conflicting creeds 
and traditions in the lower strata of then imagination. They 
are illusions, and exist in the atmosphere and not on earth. As 
well might the skipper who leaves this port for Liverpool delib- 
erately walk into his cabin, open his portfolio, and take his de- 
parture from a pencil sketch of Sandy Hook light, as for the 
thinker to shape a true course from these headlands of the im- 
agination. 

What wonder that the sea of ethical endeavor entombs the 
wrecks of so many gallant ships who run each other down in the 
dark ? Consider the tempests of interrogatory perpetually sweep- 
ing across it. How do I know that God is, and that man survives 
the dissolution of his body ? Both are asserted, and both de- 
nied. But words, whether of assertion or denial, can not stay 
the tempest of question which continually whistles through the 
cordage of that troubled bark — what proof ? I require facts, 
not words. Show me the evidence, and I will state it to my- 



THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 51 

self; or suppose I accept your word-evidence of immortality, 
among the conflicting words concerning it, how shall I dis- 
criminate the words to rely upon, with respect to my prepa- 
ration for it? I am told that this life is designed for that 
especial purpose. In what way shall I employ it ? How am I 
to know, for example, whether or not it is my duty to make a 
pilgrimage to Mecca, or to abstain from meat forty days in each 
year, and on every Friday in each week of the year ? How am 
I to know whether or not, should I take a little bread and wine 
the wrong way, I might eat and drink eternal damnation ? or 
but that I might sip everlasting bliss by taking it the right way ? 
How am I to know whether or not the time-honored rite of cir- 
cumcision should be practiced or neglected ? Should I be bap- 
tized or should I not ? and if I should be, how ? in a basin or 
in a brook ? And when, in infancy or manhood ? In short, shall 
I accept or reject as nonsense, that wonderful scheme, with all its 
variations, which Ecumenical Councils have concocted out of 
heathen mythology and the private opinions of Paul, and Peter 
and John ? Good men and wise men have answered these and 
a host of similar questions both ways. What sayest thou, my 
practical friend, who makest the ladder by which thou readiest 
to the knowledge of immortality and religious duty, of words, 
and findest authority to be the central idea of the universe; what 
answerest thou to these questions ? Canst thou say to this 
troubled ocean of six thousand years — " Peace, be still?" Will 
the storm raised by the old authority cease in the presence of 
the new ? Will it not rather increase in violence, and prove 
more and more disastrous ? Is the ancient Cod-word to be 
ousted by a newer mandate ? If so, let me see the sign-manual 
of the law-giver. 

If time and universal failure be any proof, then may we say 
there is no power in word-authority to allay this storm ; and if 
there be no help save in words, then must the clangor of 
battle, the everlasting clash and din of wordy war, the inane 
babble of theological disputation, still go on. Must not that 
be deemed the truly practical, which puts an end to it forever ? 
Demonstration and authority, when tested side by side, will be 
found to lead to opposite results, of great practical conse- 
quence. According to authority, God by authority, and in 



52 THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 

total disregard of law or established method, made the world 
and man. It teaches that both were spoken into being by an 
uttered word, and that man's immortality, like God's govern- 
ment, is conditional and capricious. From this unfixed head- 
land of arbitrary miracle, the captains of salvation set out to 
run their parallels of human duty, and to construct the tra- 
verse tables of religious rites and ceremonial observances. In 
determining these, they, of course, have nothing whatever to 
do with utility and natural law, because use and natural law 
have nothing to do with man's miraculous creation or salvation. 
According to that doctrine, he was created from the impulse of 
an idle moment, and his existence perpetuated, that his Crea- 
tor might be infinitely serenaded. The non-appearance of 
these purely speculative entities — use and law — at either ter- 
minus of man's being, is the safe warrant for their dismissal 
from every other portion of it. Hence the thing to be deter- 
mined is, not what is the use and the need, what is the good 
and the true, but what sayeth the Lord ? If the Lord say kill 
me a calf, or rob me a henroost, it is paying man's debt 
of religious duty to comply without delay, and without an 
intellectual murmur, for use and reason have neither lot nor 
part with authority. Both his religion and his God are beyond 
or without respect to natural law, and his theology may be 
defined as the ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system. 
It tends to confusion, and that continually ; its subjects are 
governed, after all, not by what God says, but by what the 
Popes say he says ; it is, throughout, a government of hearsay 
and caprice, and the newest prophet carries it. At one period 
the God-voice is uttered through a Pope, and at another through 
a book. Anon, that falls into disrepute ; when lo ! it breaks 
out afresh through a speaking medium ; but it has ever the same 
ring, and invariably indicates mischief. 

That the class of questions whence our sample is taken 
should have remained for centuries unanswered in a world 
which so long ago found out that the square of the longest side 
of a right angled triangle was equivalent to the sum of the squares 
of its remaining sides, is suggestive of serious consideration. 
That man, unaided by seer or prophet, should be able to write a 
multiplication table which will stand forever, and with a whole 



THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 53 

legion of seers, infallible books, and speaking mediums to help 
him, should not be able to make a creed that will last a hundred 
years — that Jew and Greek and Turk should hail his steam en- 
gine with joy, and turn up their sacred noses in superlative dis- 
gust at his religion, is provocative of query as to the wherefore. 
One would naturally think that, in a universe of infinite resources, 
it would not be in the combined power of its minor propositions 
to so exhaust the arcana of demonstration as to leave all its major 
problems to the tender mercy of popes and seers, books and 
bishops. That man, as a merchant, should be able to ascertain 
to a dollar what goods will pay best in the united kingdoms of 
Great Britain, Ireland and Scotland, and man, as a Christian, 
not be able to say with any certainty whatever, what treasure 
can be laid up in heaven, looks like conceding to Mammon that 
which of right belongs to God. 

Let us be practical. Should a man make a pilgrimage to 
Mecca ? Yes. 

Your proof ? A prophet. 

Should he stay at home instead, and deepen his faith in origi- 
nal sin, particular election, infant damnation, and the Trinity ? 
Yes. 

Your proof? A Geneva priest.. 

Should circumcision and the seventh day, new moons, meats 
and drinks, and divers baptisms, be observed ? Yes. 

Your proof ? Moses. 

Are they the merest beggarly trash? Yes. 

Proof ? Paul 

Should we eat codfish for forty days, in honor of the devil's 
protracted effort to convert Jesus of Nazareth to his religion ? 
Yes. 

Proof? The Pope. 

May I reject codfish with entire safety, and eat tripe if I 
choose, on a Friday ? Yes. 

Proof ? The Evangelical Ministry. 

Or, as it is asserted by the old church with the new hat, must 
I accept a Jew as the one-third part of God, and the interior 
sense of certain scraps of Jewish literature as the all of celestial 
wisdom, in order to be able, after I get fairly settled in kingdom 
come, to tell a bat from a bird, an owl from a philosopher, a 
3* 



54 THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED, 

noisome stench from a sweet perfume, or the song of an angel 
from the bray of a jack-ass ? Yes. 

Proof? A speaking medium. 

Here we are, you see, with as much authority on one side of 
the fence as on the other. 

And here we are in this nineteenth century, with our steam- 
ships and telegraphs, our chemistry and multiplication table, and 
these are the proofs upon which we rest those mightier problems 
that range so high above them all. Shall the tabernacle of 
physical science] rest upon demonstration, and the temple of 
spiritual truth stand on perpetual conjecture ? Are we to be 
forever defrauded of all certainty where we most need it ? Is 
the universal longing to know for ourselves, to receive for its 
final answer, a man to tell us ? Not so ! not so ! Man never 
asked a question that God had not the answer ready for him 
beforehand. But instead of asking him who giveth so liberally 
and without upbraiding, when he wants to know he runs to his 
Pope. He takes it for granted, having been so informed, that 
God never has anything to say to people unless they are upon 
their knees ; and then only in badly translated Greek, and worse 
understood Hebrew, and both still more confounded by the illus- 
trative commentaries of the consecrated mouth-piece. The 
Christian sects verily believe, as the all-important article of then' 
faith, that the word of God is copy-righted, and the whole edition 
exhausted. The Christian Spiritualist thinks he can hail the 
Infinite now and then on his own account, through the right 
kind of a speaking-trumpet, and that for four shillings he can 
buy a thorough test of the truth of his answer at the counter of 
the American Bible Society. And this is the shining proof he 
offers us of his progress in supernal wisdom, and of his practi- 
cality as a world reformer. 

Think of it ! The only word of God, or the only infallible 
test of divine truth, done on paper and knocked down to the 
highest bidder by an auctioneer ! A child dependent on printers 
and speaking machines to understand his father and mother I 
Who ever heard a cow address her calf in English ? Who 
ever thought of employing an interpreter to translate and 
expound to her little charge what she says ! No expounder 
can thrust his presence between that young bovine and its 



THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 55 

source of being, but to " darken counsel by words without 
knowledge." That mother's love is too potent for mere sound j 
by a magnetic thrill she inspires her offspring with the love and 
wisdom of her own nature ; and shall a calf enjoy what a man 
can not ? 

As of old, those who wished to hear the " Sermon on the 
Mount/' had to leave the church, and sit themselves quietly 
down before the preacher, in the open air ; so to-day, those who 
would hear God's voice, must leave the temples of their own 
construction, however sacred, and enter the temple of the eternal 
one, who speaks in things, not words, and is heard only in the 
" silence of all flesh." This is why the student of Spiritualism is 
deemed unpractical — he makes no noise. Himself and his fel- 
low men have been so long tossed on the sea of conjecture, he 
would feign find soundings and an anchorage for himself and 
them. Like the merchant, he would take an account of stock 
to ascertain what he has in real value, before he ventures to ex- 
tend his efforts, or to engage in new enterprises. He is a stu- 
dent of the gospel of fact, and though he may learn slowly, he 
advances surely. He may not have gotten much beyond his 
multiplication table, but that once committed, he will never have 
to renounce, and he will never be ashamed of it. He, too, has 
found God and eternal life, not by quoting books, and Popes, 
and councils, but through his observation of facts, through his 
mathematics, through that which man can only know, and God 
alone can do. The God he demonstrates is not outside of infinite 
space, but most emphatically within it. He is not the authorita- 
tive and capricious ruler of the Jews, but the supreme leing and 
continent of use, wherein all the lines of causation center — the 
eternal and universal Father — the pulsations of whose heart are 
the laws of the universe. 

Man, by authority of this gospel, is not capriciously miracled 
into being, with a big snake in the bushes to curse him and all 
his posterity for ever ; he is born of law. The student reads 
his history in this book of God, back to the rock that bands the 
globe he lives on, and his reality in God himself. He ascends to 
the demonstration of immortality, on the wings of natural law, 
to find immortality itself reposing in the bosom of law. Law 
every where, certainty infinite ; irresponsible authority nowhere. 



56 THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 

The law that links man to the worm, allies him also to the an- 
gels ; that which makes him mortal makes him also immortal, 
and there he stands revealed to the outer consciousness of the 
student, the apex of the grand pyramid of phenomenality — an 
incarnate God ! 

Seeing that man, whether in the rock, the vegetable, the ani- 
mal, the flesh, or in the spirit — in all the phases of his history — 
is a subject of law, and that God is manifest in law, and that 
law, and not authority, is manifest in God, it follows of necessity — 

First, That law, as a complex, must accord ; that is to say, 
each manifestation of it must be in unison with every other. 
And these laws are seen to accord, so far as they have yet been 
observed, either as connecting man in this life to all the planes 
of manifestation below him, or to the life beyond the present 
body. We know nothing of man without a body, for we never 
find him without one — a body existing in space and controlled 
by laws in harmony with the present life, in both its physical and 
moral relations. It is not necessary to reason out the logical 
necessity for this unity of law ; it is an observed fact, and re- 
ceives no strength from reason. 

Secondly: It is seen that, of necessity, all duties devolving 
upon this law-projected child of the Infinite, must be strictly 
legal duties. He may not be told, " Thou shalt not kill," and 
then be " hewed down like a block of wood/ 7 for obeying the 
statute. No mere statute is of any force, simply because it is a 
statute. This young fledgling from the nest of law, like every 
other, is known to be developed, sustained and governed wholly 
by means of law. He is above all miracle and all caprice. Him- 
self a form of divine use, the useful alone is binding upon him. 
He owes no service, and is under no obligation to God that he 
does not owe to himself. He is himself a micro-theism, or little 
God. 

Thirdly : The conjectural state of the world up to the last ten 
years, as to whether man continues to exist beyond the physical 
body, etc., and the present demonstration of that existence to the 
physical senses, is the key-stone to the arch of observation, from 
which we learn that the test of all things is in what they do ; 
and as all the laws or active forces which relate to man, who is 
their product, are older than his consciousness, and have inani- 



THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 5? 

fested themselves, firstly, without and around, and lastly, within 
himself, they furnish, with the foregoing facts of observation, a 
perfect key to the true theology. I do not say that by virtue 
of these facts, we have been put in possession of all theological 
truth ; but I do say that the key which unlocks it has been put 
into our hand, and that the door is open. 

Bring before the man who holds it, these empire-splitting and 
world-convulsing questions which have vexed it so long, and mark 
what he will do with them. Ask him : Ought I to starve my 
body to a skeleton, or mutilate any part of it, for the glory of 
God and the good of my soul ? Should I be a Shaker, or a 
Mormon, in my relation to woman ? He asks you, Are these 
practices physiologically and socially right ? You answer, No. 
Then they are theologically wrong, and no authority can save 
them from ultimate disgrace. Physiological, theological, and 
every other law manifest in nature, must accord, if from no other 
necessity, then from this, that they have a common end, which is, 
the development of man. With this law of accord, and the fact 
that all he can know of anything is through its manifestation, 
he is able to sift the wheat from the chaff of all past and present 
religious thought. For example, it is asserted that God is love. 
Yery well, then he must have manifested it somewhere, and the 
student of fact-revealed theology instinctively turns to where the 
manifestation abounds. The assertion is in the Bible, but the 
truth itself, and the proof of it, are quite too big for any book. 
It is also said that man should be unselfish. Will that saying 
stand the test of grown-up truth ? In other words, Can we find 
anything like unselfishness in the realm of fact ? We can find 
nothing else — not a thing that exists for itself alone. In honor, 
each prefers the other, and lives either consciously or uncon- 
sciously, for that other. Not one organ of the human body but 
acts for the good of the whole. We are told also, that " the 
wicked shall be turned into hell." These and similar assertions, 
no matter what may have been their primary signification, are 
the great bug-bears and scare-crows of the race. Drop them out 
of the public faith, and you annihilate forever the whole expensive 
and badly-working machinery of salvation. Consider how these 
words have dogged us like a vampire. By " us," I mean not 
alone the Methodist or the Presbyterian, but the Spiritualist 



58 THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 

All his evil Spirits and bis dismal experiences in spiritual inter- 
course, are born out of these mighty words. As God is reported 
to have said, " Let there be light, and there was light !" these 
have said, Let there be darkness, and there was darkness! Then 
appeared the sea of hell-fire, and the dry land of damnation. 

But what student of the gospel of observation has yet found 
it, in any sense the words can be made to signify ? TJp to the 
present hour, he has discovered nothing like it, either as a ground- 
plan in the Divine economy, or as an institution for the benefit 
of man. 

Consider how the good John Murray and his sect have striven 
to blot out this horrid dogma. Learned and good men, by ex- 
posing the errors of popular interpretation, and urging the in- 
stincts of natural justice and goodness, have done much to alle- 
viate its miseries ; but they battle against word with word, and 
natural justice and goodness still lie prostrate before it, in the 
solemn faith of millions ! 

Here is the true test of the practical man — that he puts no 
faith in mere words. He predicates the conditions of the future 
life as he does the character of men in this life, on what they do. 
Judged by this standard, he has found nothing there as yet that 
smacks in the least of diabolism. But he does find that codfish, 
as a means of grace, or a passport to the Divine favor, is not 
held there in very high esteem. " The Apostles' Creed," even, 
is at a discount. Instead of keeping a day holy, they appear to 
keep themselves so, which is worthy of imitation. They are not 
very particular as to which point of the compass they turn their 
faces when they do their worship. They do not appear to hold 
bread or wine in high regard as the religious elements of spirit- 
ual pabulum, and they manifestly consider water as much better 
adapted to washing shirts than to cleansing souls. Hence the 
observer concludes that diving into a mill-pond after salvation, 
and going through a routine of galvanic spasms at the beck of a 
fugleman gratuitously dubbed a religious teacher, is not the most 
scientific method of securing it. Immortality in fact is so dif- 
ferent from immortality in faith, that the man of fact is lost in 
admiration and adoration at the opening vista of its realities. 

With these realities for a basis, he gathers practical values 
innumerable. Among these, he ascertains to a certainty, what 



THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 59 

before was shrewdly suspected by a few, that haste is not always 
progress. A dramatic author and actor, in defending his own 
personation of one of his characters, from a recent newspaper 
criticism, remarked of the London fast man (in a bad sense), 
that he was proverbially the slow man to all outward seeming. 
This is true of the practical man, in the best sense. God is never 
in a hurry. Trees are not made bigger by nailing wood about 
them. A gentleman whom I esteem very highly for his practi- 
cal tendencies, once upon a time put in operation a plan which 
had in it more of the external promise of success than any other 
slab-nailing process I have yet met with. He made all his em- 
ployees, in addition to their wages, sharers in the profits of their 
joint labor and capital. He wished to elevate them above the 
degradation which attaches to hireling industry in this exceed- 
ingly genteel and enlightened world, and give them to feel that 
labor was as respectable and valuable as gold. I think this 
machine for the elevation of humanity was in operation for about 
two years ; however, I shall be sufficiently correct to point the 
moral, when I add, that before it finally blew off steam, nearly 
every dollar of their surplus savings found its way into the com- 
fortable and capacious pouch of the Roman Catholic Church. 
By this it would appear, that making whistles out of pig's tails, 
though attended with much activity and noise, can scarcely be 
deemed practical. 

He learns, also, why it is that his multiplication table travels 
all over the globe, and is everywhere honored, while his creed, 
which came to him direct from God, in his own estimation, the 
moment it leaves the family circle, is universally hooted at and 
despised. He sees now why it was that Jesus never dogmatized, 
but spake in parables, and said, " As a test of the truth I utter, 
behold the factP 

The disciple in this school has faith only in what he knows — 
his trust and confidence keep pace with his experience. He has 
all the cheerful patience with to-day that he sees God to have, 
for he sees its future in the light of God. His models of work 
and duty are the revolving worlds of God's universe — the re- 
volving seasons of his year. He in his little orbit, and they in 
their mighty sweep, are quite too practical to be in a hurry — too 



60 THE SCIENCE IMPARTIALLY APPLIED. 

earnest to make a noise. The barn-yard fowl, when she drops 
her egg, may cackle the grand achievement to an astonished uni- 
verse ; but this mighty globe, with its myriads of beating hearts, 
moves on as silently and unperceived as the dew drop gathers 
upon the bosom of a sleeping flower. 



■^^H^^^^gS^^^^g— S^^^^^s^:!^^ 



THE 



t 



ROAD TO SPIRITUALISM 



BEING A- SERIES OF FOUR LECTURES, 



DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF 



% 



THE NEW-YORK LYCEUM, 

; 

BY DR. r: t. iiallock, 

AUTHOR OF "THE CHILD AND THE MAN.'' 



LECTU 
LECTU 
LECTU 



RE L- 
RE II.- 

RE I IT. 



I 
D 

Spiritualism Considered as a Scientific Problem. 

-Spiritualism Considered as a Science. u^ 

— Spiritualism Considered with Respeci to its Diffi- <T\ 

culties and Objections, both Intrinsic and Extrinsic. )J 

LECTURE IV.— The Science Impartially Applied. (fV> 



S 
& 



J, IX cw~V>o x k : 

PUBLISHED AT THE SPIRITUAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE, 

1 NO. 3 90 BROADWAY. *P 

} i858 - d 



NATURE'S DIVINE REVELATIONS. 

BY A. J. DAYIS. 

This large work, which may be considered the pioneer of the modern 
spiritual unfolding, is still in constant demand by the inquiring pub- 
lic . notwithstanding the numerous editions through which it has passed. 
It is the product of a series of dictations by Mr. Davis, while in the 
clairvoyant or spiritualized state, during the years 1845 and 1846, and 
in it the subsequent and more general spiritual manifestations are fore- 
shadowed and distinctly predicted. It may be said to occupy gen- 
erally the whole range of human thought on mundane and spiritual 
subjects, in a progressive and, for the most part, methodical way, and^ 
by discriminating minds has been found immensely fruitful of suggest 
tions. Published . by Charles Partridge, at the Spiritual Telegraph 
office, 390 Broadway, N. Y. Price $2,00 ; postage 43 cents. 



SPIRITUALISM SCIENTIFICALLY DEMONSTRATED. 

BY DR. ROBERT HAKE. 

This large volume embodies the results of the crowning labors and 
investigations of one whose life had been devoted to scientific pursuits, 
and who has been deservedly ranked among the most illustrious discov- 
erers in the various fields of his researches. Now that the distin- 
guished author of this production has finished his labors in the mujl 
dane sphere, and has himself become a Spirit, many will doubtless wish 
to provide themselves with this closing record of his life-long inquiries) 
for truth ; and to such we would say, the book is published by Charles 
Partridge, at the office of the Spiritual Telegraph, 390 Broadway, 
N. Y. Price $1,75 ; postage 30 cents. 



THE SPIRITUAL TELEGRAPH, 

A Weekly Journal, devoted to the Facts and Philosophy of Modern 
Spiritualism. Published at 390 Broadway, New York, at $2 per annum 
in advance. Charles Partridge, Editor and Proprietor. This is the 
first periodical publication that was ever established as an exponent of 
the current spiritual phenomena, and has passed through six annual 
volumes, and is now in the seventh. Beside the intelligence respecting 
spiritual matters weekly given in its columns, it contains items of ihe 
latest news, and a variety of other reading, which renders it a valua- 
ble and welcome visitor to the family circle. 



THE TELEGRAPH PAPERS. 

Nine volumes, 12mo, for the years 1853, '4 and V>, aboui 
pages, with complete index to each volume, handsomely bound. The; 
books contain all the more important articles from the weekly Spirb 
ual Telegraph, and embrace nearly all the important spiritual lac 
which have been made public during the three years ending M 
1857. The price of these books is 75 cents per volume. Posl 
(( cents per volume. Charles Partridge, Publisher, 390 Broadway. N 
York. 

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